★ 2023-06-21
In French colonial Senegal, a young, soon-to-be-eminent French botanist becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman sold into slavery who escaped to freedom.
Michel Adanson journeyed to Senegal to catalog new fauna and flora for “Universal Orb,” his magnum opus. A half-century later, following his death in 1806, his daughter, Aglaé, discovers his hidden notebooks, which document his intense experiences on and around the island of Gorée. Life will never be the same for him after he learns of Maram Seck, known as “the revenant,” who is said to have miraculously “returned alive from beyond the seas, from that land where, for slaves, there is no return” and disappeared on Senegal’s Cap-Vert. Consumed by Maram’s story, Adanson and his guide endure harsh conditions to find her, and when they do, they learn that her painful tale is very different from the face-saving version told by her uncle Baba Seck, a village chief. When she was 16, he sold her to a white man for a musket after she bashed him unconscious during an attempted rape. Overwhelmed by her natural beauty, spiritual strength, and beguiling use of the nontonal Wolof language, Adanson falls helplessly in love with her. But fearful that he will never be worthy of her love, he ultimately exposes the traits that make that so. Less brutal than Diop’s International Booker Prize–winning At Night All Blood is Black (2020) but no less powerful, the new book takes its title from the familiar name for the place on “the island of slaves” where millions of Africans were shipped to the Americas. 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 (including Aglaé’s) unfold belies the emotional force they gather.
A mesmerizing tale.
Diop's love story/epic adventure, written with compassion and skill, is dramatized by a talented team of narrators. Dion Graham portrays Michel Adanson, a French Enlightenment-era botanist; Mark Bramhall, Adenrele Ojo, and Caroline Hewitt portray different members of his family and some friends.… The Senegalese characters are adeptly portrayed by Graham.… Maram Seck, a young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo…is voiced with extraordinary sensuality by Ojo. Together, the narrators deliver a historical epic of the highest order, based on the richness and lyricism of Senegal's Waalo language rhythms and oral storytelling traditions.” —AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner
“The story begins in 1806 Paris, as narrator Mark Bramhall conveys the regret running through dying French botanist Michel Adanson's opening words. Bramhall then passes the tale to Caroline Hewitt, who superbly delivers the reactions of Adanson's daughter Aglae as she grieves her father's death and finds a secret journal detailing his last wishes.… Bramhall piercingly voices Adanson's helpless rage as he rationalizes his decision to relinquish his dream of being with Maram and marry a French woman instead. Adenrele Ojo's intense, whispery performance of Maram's story is spellbinding, and Dion Graham shines as Adanson's horrified guide and friend Ndiek. A compelling performance of Diop's National Book Award–shortlisted novel in translation.” —Library Journal
"Poignant . . . A hypnotic, powerful historical novel in which stories nest within one another like dolls . . . In a few vivid brush strokes, Diop [. . .] brings to life not only [Michel] Adanson, but also the ways in which his dreams, loves and losses shaped the lives of those around him. It all coheres mesmerizingly." —Clémence Michallon, The New York Times Book Review
"A mesmerizing tale of capture, getaway, and revenge. Diop’s novel, which culminates in a terrifying sequence of events, is a testament to fiction’s ability to uncover our self-deceptions, leaving them 'as if exposed to the African sun at its zenith.'" —The New Yorker
"Diop has brought his capacious mind to bear on an earlier period of encounter between Europe and Africa . . . 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 honors Senegalese oral culture . . . This is a novel with enough frame narratives to make the ghost of Joseph Conrad come and listen." —Alexandra Harris, The Guardian
"Diop masterfully teases out [Michel] Adanson’s tale of youthful adventure and awakening . . . Diop has again exposed a neglected corner of the French colonial experience, expanding the country’s literary conversation at a time of heated debate over national identity and culture. As Adanson reflects, 'Only fiction, the novel of a life, can give a genuine glimpse of its profound reality, its complexity; only fiction can illuminate its darkest corners.'" —Andy Tepper, Los Angeles Times
"Superbly translated . . . A compelling critique of colonial violence and the dehumanization of Black people." —Lucy Popescu, The Observer
"A compelling romantic adventure . . . [Diop's novel] can only be described as a feat of storytelling . . . Intricately layered, enfolding stories within stories, Beyond the Door of No Return is many things at once: mystery, autobiography, epistolary, romance, adventure, confession." —Sana Goyal, Financial Times
"[Beyond the Door of No Return] opens in particularly juicy fashion . . . [A novel] in the grand tradition of picaresque adventures . . . 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." —John Self, The Times (London)
"Diop has turned fascinating historical records into fiction in Beyond the Door of No Return . . . Even 300 years later, Maram's touching story offers crucial lessons about unconscionable acts of slavery, perpetrated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean." —Angela Ajayi, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"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, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the Booker Prize
"A mesmerizing tale . . . Less brutal than Diop’s International Booker Prize–winning At Night All Blood is Black (2020) 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 (including Aglaé’s) unfold belies the emotional force they gather." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A captivating intergenerational epic influenced by Senegalese oral tradition . . . Told as a series of fast-paced stories within stories, the novel contemplates race, hierarchy, religion, legends . . . 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." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An engrossing work from a powerful and humane writer." —BookPage
