Beyond The Door of No Return

Name: Beyond The Door of No Return
SKU: 87928
Availability: InStock

₦23,000.00

FINALIST FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED FICTION

‘A love story, an adventure tale, and an unflinching examination of the unexpected ways that colonialism and greed ravaged everyone it touched, European and African’ MAAZA MENGISTE, Booker Prize–shortlisted author of The Shadow KiABDULRAZAK GURNAH, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
‘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
‘Diop explores the cruelties of colonialism in a powerful story of love destroyed’ SUNDAY TIMES, Historical Fiction Pick of the Month

__________

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.

6 in stock

Product Description

Review

‘Stunningly realized and written in exquisite prose, Beyond the Door of No Return is a love story, an adventure tale, and an unflinching examination of the unexpected ways that colonialism and greed ravaged everyone it touched, European and African. It is above all else, a spellbinding novel about the high price of betrayal-of others, and oneself’ –Maaza Mengiste, Booker Prize–shortlisted author of The Shadow King

‘I read Beyond the Door of No Return with pleasure and admiration. David Diop has opened up a new way of thinking about the eighteenth century and its hideous cruelties’ –Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of Afterlives

‘A compelling romantic adventure… Intricately layered, enfolding stories within stories, Beyond the Door of No Return is many things at once: mystery, autobiography, epistolary, romance, adventure, confession. Through an act of remembrance, Diop seeks to build a repository of lives and histories lost to the slave trade’ –Financial Times

From the Back Cover

From the author of the International Booker Prize-winning At Night All Blood is Black: a moving and immersive adventure story set in eighteenth century Senegal 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. Praise for At Night All Blood is Black ‘So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever forget it’ – Ali Smith, Guardian ‘More than a century after World War I, a great new African writer [has written] a spare yet extraordinary novel about this bloody stain on human history’ – Chigozie Obioma, New York Times Book Review ‘An extraordinary novel, full of sadness, rage and beauty’ Sarah Waters

About the Author

David Diop was born in Paris in 1966 and grew up in Senegal. He now lives in France, where he is a professor of Eighteenth Century Literature at the University of Pau. David’s second novel, At Night All Blood is Black, has been translated into more than 30 languages, winning the International Booker Prize and the LA Times Book Prize, as well as major prizes in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and was chosen by Barack Obama as one of his summer reads. Beyond the Door of No Return was longlisted for the Goncourt Prize and has sold over 120,000 copies in France.