BEYOND THE DOOR OF NO RETURN, translated from the French by Sam Taylor

243pp., paperback, London, 2023

First published in France in 2021 as La porte du voyage sans retour. First published in English in USA in 2023.

Novel set in Paris in 1806. The last word renowned botanist Michel Adanson utters as he dies is a woman’s name: Maram. The key to this woman’s identity is Adanson’s unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, hidden in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers.

"Stunningly realized and written in exquisite prose ... 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

"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

 David Diop was born in Paris and was raised in Senegal. He is the head of the Arts, Languages, and Literature Department at the University of Pau. His second novel, At Night All Blood Is Black, was awarded the International Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction.