Beyond the Door of No Return

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 *