Beyond The Door of No Return
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
FINALIST FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED FICTION
'Stunningly realized… A spellbinding novel' MAAZA MENGISTE, Booker Prize–shortlisted author of The Shadow King
'Diop has opened a new way of thinking about the eighteenth century and its hideous cruelties' ABDULRAZAK GURNAH, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
'A compelling romantic adventure… Through an act of remembrance, Diop seeks to build a repository of lives and histories lost to the slave trade' FINANCIAL TIMES
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The captivating new novel from David Diop, winner of the International Booker Prize
Paris, 1806. Michel Adanson is dying. The last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram. Who was she? Why, in the course of his long life, has he never spoken of her before?
As Adanson's daughter sorts through his things, she discovers a notebook. It reveals a secret history both fantastical and terrible, of his time as a young botanist travelling in Senegal.
How Adanson first heard of the 'revenant': a young woman of noble birth, abducted and sold into slavery across the seas, who then did the impossible-she came back, to live in hiding.
How he became obsessed with finding her, embarking on an odyssey that would lead to danger and destruction.
How a man who longed to solve the mysteries of nature instead found himself faced with the uncontrollable impulses of the human heart.
Tragic and tender, alive with feeling, this is a story of adventure, revenge and impossible desires, one which subverts our every expectation about who we are and who we love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Diop (At Night All Blood Is Black) returns with a captivating intergenerational epic influenced by Senegalese oral tradition. It begins in 1806 Paris, where botanist Michel Adanson dies, leaving his adult daughter, Aglaé, with fervent questions about who her father really was. Among his many belongings, she finds a manuscript intended for her, recounting the years Adanson spent in Senegal in his early 20s, researching flora and fauna. There, he hears a story from village chief Baba Seck about Maram, the chief's adopted daughter who was kidnapped, sold into slavery, escaped, and returned to a nearby village. Adanson and his guide and friend Ndiek become obsessed with finding Maram, which sets them on an overland journey through the Senegalese bush. Told as a series of fast-paced stories within stories, the novel contemplates race, hierarchy, religion, legends, and possible futures for its characters and society at large. At the same time as he considers the big picture, though, Diop writes excellently of historical and regional minutiae, as in his descriptions of the sheer heat and exhaustion his characters face on their travels. This is a novel to devour quickly, but which will leave readers contemplating its story long after.