I Made a Promise I Could Not Keep: Speculative Essays

Books and their writers can get into some pretty murky territory when they set out into the world. Something seems like a good idea, and they go for it; another word for that is ＂inspiration.＂ Each of the essays in this engagingly provocative collection about the morals of writing explores an aspect of what writers do, but you don’t have to be a writer to consider the same issues. You just have to be human.

David Homel was born in Chicago in 1952 and left the city in 1970 for Paris, living in Europe the next few years on odd jobs. He has published ten novels, from Electrical Storms (1988) to The Teardown, which won the Paragraph Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2019, and most recently, Private Number (2025). He has also written young adult fiction with Marie-Louise Gay, directed documentary films, worked in TV production, been a literary translator, journalist, and creative writing teacher. He has translated four books for Linda Leith Publishing: Bitter Rose (2015), The Last Bullet Is For You (2016), Nan Goldin: The Warrior Medusa (2017) and Taximan (2018). Lunging into the Underbrush (2021), also with LLP, was his first book of non-fiction. He lives in Montreal.