Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
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.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,
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,
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
Diop explores the cruelties of colonialism in a powerful story of love destroyed
Sunday Times, Historical Fiction Pick of the Month
With Beyond The Door of No Return, David Diop once again makes us re-examine and reimagine West African history and the wrongdoing that has been done there by Europeans. This book illustrates and raises questions about guilt, language, othering, treachery, adventure and love. It is a beautifully written, yet easy to read, novel, that will leave you thinking long after you finish it
- Sally Hayden, the award-winning author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned,
A formerly enslaved woman gets her revenge... Diop has turned fascinating historical records into fiction... Maram's touching story offers crucial lessons about unconscionable acts of slavery, perpetrated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean
Star Tribune
Less brutal than Diop's International Booker Prize-winning At Night All Blood is Black but no less powerful... With its sumptuous physical descriptions, shades of language, and smooth overlap of truth and invention, this is masterful storytelling. The ease with which the narratives unfold belies the emotional force they gather... A mesmerizing tale
Kirkus, starred review
A captivating intergenerational epic influenced by Senegalese oral tradition... A novel to devour quickly, but which will leave readers contemplating its story long after
Publishers Weekly, starred review
Further endorsement of fiction's ability for revelation... There is suspense, adversity and tension
Irish Times
At once melancholy and luminous
Le Monde
A hypnotic, powerful historical novel in which stories nest within one another like dolls... In less skilled hands, the novel's structure would not work... But the opposite happens here. In a few vivid brush strokes, Diop brings to life not only Adanson, but also the ways in which his dreams, loves and losses shaped the lives of those around him. It all coheres mesmerizingly
New York Times
Diop's poetic sensibility marks every sentence of this resonant story
Big Issue
Reading about another country, another culture, another age has the brain-opening effect that Adanson experienced almost 300 years ago... There's nothing quite like this book out there
The Times
[A] thrilling novel, full of escapade and adventure, but also an elegant meditation on the relationships between fathers and daughters, and on the challenges of reckoning with the legacy of personal and political histories
Daily Mail
Offers a portrait of a world in which beauty and brutality co-exist
Mail on Sunday
A sublime odyssey confronting the universal values of the Enlightenment with the Atlantic slave trade
CNEWS
Definitively confirms David Diop as a major author on the modern literary landscape
Télérama
Gripping... A twisty novel
Literary Review
A humanist meditation anchored in African tradition... A historical epic with a bewitching style... A superb adventure story
Femina
David Diop masterfully blends genres... Weaving together Western myths and African beliefs, the rationality of the dawning age of science and timeless magic
La Vie Hebdo
Bewitching at first, the story takes a cruel, overwhelming turn as the time for decisions comes
Le Canard enchaîné
A magnificent novel about romantic passion, and how it destroys as much as it saves
Les Inrocks
A compelling critique of colonial violence and the dehumanisation of Black people, this book illustrates how inhabiting another language promotes compassion
Observer
It's hard to imagine a more gripping or fertile subject for Diop's fictional exploration... Romantically and dramatically is how he tells it here, with a delight in narrative that honours Senegalese oral culture
Guardian
A complex tale rooted in historical research and filled with curiosities
TLS
Does a masterful job of showing up the racist brutalities of the slave trade and its associated cruelties and hypocrisies... and wraps it all up in a gripping, galloping narrative that challenges perceptions to the very last page
Marie Claire
A stunning and adventurous novel [that] invites the reader to wrestle with belief as a concept, whether with regard to religion, methods of storytelling, or even personal belief in oneself to write and rewrite your own narratives
Vox
A tragic adventure novel related in crisp epistolary form
Sydney Morning Herald