Beyond the Door of No Return
A Novel
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature | Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award
One of The Atlantic’s 10 Best Books of 2023
A Financial Times Best Book of 2023 | Named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews
“A hypnotic, powerful historical novel in which stories nest within one another like dolls . . . It all coheres mesmerizingly.” —Clémence 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The key to this mysterious woman’s identity is Adanson’s unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers.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 Gorée—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.
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.
