Narrative Landscape Press has revealed the cover for their forthcoming East and West Africa edition of Promises, the fifth novel by Ugandan author Goretti Kyomuhendo. The cover, bold and immediately striking, sets a winding blue river against a vivid red landscape, a golden sun suspended at its horizon. It is the kind of design that makes a quiet argument before a single page is read: that this is a story about movement, the distance between here and somewhere else, what flows between people and what doesn’t.

Promises follows two young lovers, Ajuna and Kagaba, whose plans to marry are derailed when Kagaba cannot find employment in Uganda and leaves for the UK, while Ajuna stays behind as a lecturer at the National University. The novel alternates between their perspectives across two continents, building a portrait of migration, waiting, and the ripple effects of one person’s choices on everyone around them. The novel took Kyomuhendo nearly ten years to write, rooted in years of listening to the stories of Ugandan immigrants in the UK. “I felt that Ugandans who had moved to the UK covered up the difficulties they faced,” she has said. “They would not talk about the hardships.”

Kyomuhendo is one of Uganda’s leading novelists and a founding director of the African Writers Trust. Her previous novels include Secrets No More (1999), winner of the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel; Waiting (2007), which garnered significant international critical attention and was translated into Spanish; and Whispers from Vera (2023), first runner-up for the 2024 Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize for Creative Writing. She was the first Ugandan woman to receive an international writing programme fellowship from the University of Iowa, has chaired the judging panel for the Caine Prize, and in 2019 was named among the 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine.

Under the acquisition, the Nigeria-based Narrative Landscape Press will publish a new regional edition of the novel with a refreshed cover design, making it available across bookstores, libraries, and schools in East and West Africa. “We are honoured to bring Promises into our catalogue,” said Anwuli Ojogwu, Managing Director at Narrative Landscape Press. “Goretti Kyomuhendo’s writing carries emotional depth, social insight, and literary elegance.” Publication is scheduled for 2026.