Beyond the Door of No Return

Beyond the Door of No Return

David Diop

David Diop

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED FICTION"A hypnotic, powerful historical novel in which stories nest within one another like dolls . . . It all coheres mesmerizingly." —Clémence Michallon, The New York Times Book Review"Stunningly realized . . . Exquisite . . . A spellbinding novel." —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow KingThe 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the last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram.The key to this mysterious woman's identity is Adanson's unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers.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...
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At Night All Blood Is Black

At Night All Blood Is Black

David Diop

David Diop

"Heartbreaking and poetic." —The GuardianOne of the Wall Street Journal's 11 best books of the fallNamed a most anticipated book by Literary Hub | Electric Literature| The Millions | Refinery29Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop's English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a "powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel" (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War.Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called "Chocolat" soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man's Land. Unable to commit this mercy...
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