The Center for Fiction welcomes David Diop, International Booker Prize winner for At Night All Blood Is Black, to celebrate his latest novel Beyond the Door of No Return, translated by Sam Taylor. Named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the Atlantic and the Financial Times, the novel follows Michel Adanson, a Parisian botanist who dies in 1806, leaving behind an unpublished memoir. Written in it is the story of the years he spent in Senegal long ago, and the tale of Maram, the woman he loved. While traveling through West Africa for his research, a young Adanson hears about Maram, a noblewoman from the kingdom of Waalo who was sold into slavery but later escaped, and becomes obsessed with finding her. This mesmerizing work portrays the horrific violence of colonial occupation while drawing from a rich background of Senegalese oral tradition. Diop crafts a “hypnotic, powerful historical novel in which stories nest within one another like dolls” (Clémence Michallon, New York Times Book Review). Writer and translator Madhu H. Kaza (Lines of Flight) joins Diop for a powerful conversation on his novel and how, as he writes, “Only fiction, the novel of a life, can give a genuine glimpse of its profound reality.”
This event is a part of Villa Albertine’s Authors on Tour program. David Diop’s 2024 U.S. tour is made possible by Villa Albertine.