Beyond the Door of No Return will be released on the 19th of September, 2023, and will be translated by Sam Taylor.
By Hope Ibiale
Senegalese author and 2021 International Booker Prize winner, David Diop, is set to release a new novel, Beyond the Door of No Return. The book, which will be released on the 19th of September, 2023, will be translated by Sam Taylor. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers, will publish it.
Described by Sarah Waters as, “An extraordinary novel, full of sadness, rage, and beauty,” Beyond the Door of No Return is set against the backdrop of the Age of Enlightenment and the Atlantic Slave Trade. The book tells a thrillingly subversive story of romance and adventure. A young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, Maram, was sold into slavery but escaped from the Island of Gorée—a significant embarkation point of the transatlantic slave trade—to a small village hidden in the forest.
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According to the Macmillian publishing press, “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.”
David Diop is a French novelist and lecturer, who specialises in 18th-century French and Francophone African literature. His research at the University of Pau in southwest France, focuses on representations of Africa in 18th-century accounts and images by travellers. Diop received the 2021 International Booker Prize for his novel At Night All Blood Is Black, making him the first French-African author ever to win it. The novel was also shortlisted for ten French awards and won them in other countries. His other works include 1889, l’Attraction universelle and Frère d’âme. Beyond the Door of No Return is Diop’s first novel after winning the International Booker Prize. He has won awards like the Prix Goncourt, the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Médicis, the Prix Femina, Los Angeles Times Fiction Book Prize, and many others.
Preorder the book here.