Beyond the Door of No Return: A Novel

A Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Fiction One of The Atlantics 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. Clmence 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 womans name: Maram. The key to this mysterious womans identity is Adansons unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers.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 Gorea major embarkation point of the transatlantic slave tradeto 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 Diops Beyond the Door of No Return is a love story like few others. Drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegals oral traditions, Diop has constructed a historical epic of the highest order.