Beyond the Door of No Return A Novel by David Diop
A FINALIST FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED FICTION
One of Publishers Weekly 's best fiction books of 2023
A hypnotic, powerful historical novel in which stories nest within one another like dolls . . . It all coheres mesmerizingly." - Clemence Michallon, The New York Times Book Review
"Stunningly realized . . . Exquisite . . . A spellbinding novel." - Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King
The thrilling and deeply moving new novel by David Diop, winner of the International Booker Prize.
Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram.
The key to this mysterious woman's identity is Adanson's unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant. A young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, Maram was sold into slavery but managed to escape from the Island of Goree - a major embarkation point of the transatlantic slave trade - to a small village hidden in the forest. While on a research expedition in West Africa as a young man, Adanson hears the story of the revenant and becomes obsessed with finding her. Accompanied by his guide, he ventures deep into the Senegalese bush on a journey that reveals not only the savagery of the French colonial occupation but also the unlikely transports of the human heart.
Written with sensitivity and narrative flair, David Diop's Beyond the Door of No Return is a love story like few others. Drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegal's oral traditions, Diop has constructed a historical epic of the highest order.
Contributor Bio
David Diop was born in Paris and was raised in Senegal. He is the head of the Arts, Languages, and Literature Department at the University of Pau, where his research includes such topics as eighteenth-century French literature and European representations of Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His second novel, At Night All Blood Is Black, was awarded the International Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. Sam Taylorhas written for The Guardian, Financial Times, Vogue and Esquire, and has translated such works as the award-winning HHhHby Laurent Binet, and the internationally-bestselling The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker.
More Details
- Farrar Straus & Giroux
- Imprint : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Fall 2023
- On Sale: Sep 19/23
- Cloth | 5.65 x 8.55
- FICTION / Literary
- 9780374606770
