The Promise of Iceland

Born from a secret liaison between a British mother and an Icelandic father, Kári Gíslason was the subject of a promise—a promise elicited from his father to not reveal his identity. The Icelandic city of Reykjavik, where Kári was born, was also home to his father, his father's wife, and their four children—none of whom knew of Kári's existence.

Moving regularly between Iceland and Australia, he grew up aware of his father's identity, but understanding that it was the subject of a secret pact between his parents. At the age of 27, he makes a decision to break the pact and contacts his father's other family. What follows, and what leads him there, makes for a riveting journey over landscapes, time, and memory.

Kári travels from the freezing cold winters of Iceland to the shark net at Sydney's Balmoral, to an unsettled life in the English countryside, to the harsh yellow summer of Brisbane, and back again. He traces the steps of his mother who, in the mid-1960s, answered an ad in The Times for an English-speaking secretary and found herself in Iceland among the 'Army of Foreign Secretaries', and in the arms of a secret lover.

The Promise of Iceland becomes the substitute for the father Kári never really knew as he discovers the meaning of 'home' and closes the circle of his own fatherless life.