Enjoyed the diary format but it’s hard to read emotionally, I think the format just made that more intense. I learned a lot!

I’m not usually someone who is interested in historical fiction but I was blown away by David Diop’s first novel and wanted to give this one a try. It doesn’t quite live up to my expectations based on how much I adored his first book but I did find this to be an enjoyable read. The book was not particularly long but I did feel like it dragged in some places, I think Diop really excels at writing shorter length novels. It explored a lot of the same themes as Diop’s earlier work which I enjoyed as I think his reflections on colonialism are important.

This magnificently layered book is an excellent follow-up to Diop’s award-winning At Night All Blood is Black. Beyond the Door of No Return is less gruesome than his first book, but all the same explores dark themes of colonialism, slavery, and sexual violence.

The story begins with Michel Adanson’s dying in Paris. The (white) botanist leaves behind a diary recounting his time in Senegal as a young man, a story he’d never told before. His daughter discovers the diary as part of her inheritance and reads what is essentially Adanson’s long letter to her. We learn of his journey to meet a “revenant”, a young woman sold into slavery who has supposedly come back to Africa from the Americas. Over the course of his expedition, Adanson’s eyes are opened to the horrors of the colonialism and the slave trade.

Diop is excellent at writing a concise but full story. Though the book is under 300 pages, I never felt as though character development or plot was lacking. Instead, Diop captures the complexity of the moment through Adanson’s eyes. The last chapter of the book is told from a different, more minor, character’s perspective, excellently providing a critique of Adanson’s narrative.

While it would be wrong to say I enjoyed this book, given some of the subject matter, I was captivated by the story. I’d definitely recommend, especially if you liked Diop’s previous book.

DNF at around 35%

One reason I am very peaky with requesting ARCs is that I feel extremely guilty when I do not enjoy the book I receive. I usually request only books that I am confident I would like or written by authors I enjoyed in the past. This novel was in the latter category. I appreciated the winner of Booker International 2022, At Night All Blood is Back, and was looking forward to reading the latest release from David Diop. The blurb looked interesting so I was sure I would enjoy it. Alas, it was not to be.

Hmm, how to describe the novel in a sentence. I suppose I could say that it can be used as a cure for insomnia. I am not a sufferer, so I only needed a few pages per evening to fall asleep. Too bad, because the premise seemed exciting. After his death, a famous botanist leaves to her daughter the journal of his trip to Senegal. The novel includes his search for a mysterious woman who escaped from slavery and hid in a village in the forest. The man becomes obsessed with the woman and probably he will have to face some hardship but I did not get there. I got lost at a wedding of a tribe kind. I was interested to learn more about the culture and colonial history of the place but the writing could not keep my interest alive for more than a few pages. Such a pity.

The writing in David Diop’s first novel was raw, feverish, dark but also poetic. It was special. Here, it is too standard, flat as the lake in a windless morning, it has nothing in common with the prose which mesmerised me in At Night All Blood is Back.

This is a story about slavery in the 18th century from an unexpected angle: Diop introduces us to a French botanist through his relationship with his daughter. He has been distant for much of her life, but when he dies, he leaves her a folder in which he has recorded a story from his past, from a trip to Senegal.

Beyond the Door of No Return explores one white man’s curiosity and destructive passion for a Black woman—the weight of his colonial heritage against her position as an object, as colonial property. It’s barely a love story—perhaps only in his overwhelming desire to possess her, which is an interesting juxtaposition against the French colonial belief in its own right to possession. In fact, Maram’s sin is her beauty, as her life is ruined by the lust of the men around her. Because of Diop’s chosen and curious perspective, Maram’s voice in this story is conspicuously silent—itself an important commentary.

A book that gives the reader much to think about, written in elevated and formal literary language, Beyond the Door of No Return is heady and vivid, and would be an unalloyed pleasure were it not for the bleak story at its centre. Still, an excellent read.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to NetGalley for this ARC.

I enjoyed this novel a great deal. I'm not sure how it works and what it captivated me so much because it's mostly written in narrative summary and there are nesting narrators and honestly who would think it would be so captivating but it is. It has to do with the mood of it, the absolute immersion in a time and a historical moment. I love the theme of a scientist spending his entire life on a project that he knows in the end is doomed to ever being complete, that is obsolete before he has come to the end of it. I love the strange moody archaic language and the specificity of the sensual details. It's not anything like Diop's previous novel and for a while in the beginning I was missing the drive and terror and relentless brutal action of At Night All Blood is Black. This is not that book. Once I put my false expectation on a shelf, and accepted that I was not about to read another novel like that one (or indeed one that was even remotely like that one) then I was able to dive in and love the tapestry and opulence of this novel, so completely different from my expectation.

Beautiful prose, engaging story that I could not put down. Recommended for anyone who loves historical fiction and appreciates good writing. Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

In his latest novel, acclaimed author Diop, is inspired by the Greek romance tragedy Orpheus and Eurydice to examine the early years of French colonization in Senegal. It is through the lips of the protagonist – a dying, reclusive, and eccentric botanist, Michel Adanson, that we discover Maram. A name issued in his last breath to his attending daughter, Aglae’, who is clueless as to what she heard.

Michel leaves clues for his daughter in his personal belongings which leads to a diary that details his time spent in Senegal in his youth as a sponsored botanist. Upon discovering the journals, Aglae’ and the reader are transported back to the 1700’s in the early days of the slave trade and European World expansion. Michael harbors European arrogance and racist views until he is inundated into the community. He begins to see the errors of his upbring and begins to appreciate the people, their language, culture and way of life.

A chief’s story about his niece's capture, sale into slavery, deportation to the Americas, survival and return to Africa sounds completely unbelievable to both African and European ears. It is widely known that leaving Goree Island enslaved in chains for trade is a one-way voyage (hence reference to the novel’s title). Michel sets off with his entourage to (secretly) find her to learn her survival/homecoming story.

Michel “discovery” and Maram’s story are both odysseys of legend. There are more than one harrowing near-death experiences, political intrigue between rival kingdoms, shady business practices of the Senegal Concession, and Michel’s infatuation with Maram that leads to a surprising twist of fate.

I enjoyed this rather short offering which glimpses a view of the world at a very different time. It is definitely worth picking up for history buffs and those interested in the French involvement in the African Diaspora.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for the opportunity to review.

“When you pass through the door to the next world, you cannot take your modesty with you.”

Michel Adanson has devoted himself to botany, a passion but also a means by which he will gain the admiration, respect and, yes, jealousy of scientists throughout Europe. By the time he is standing before the door through which we all will pass, the nineteenth century having barely bloomed, he has managed to describe one hundred thousand plants, animals, and shellfish. He knows, reflecting as he must on his death bed, that despite his spectacular achievement and the sacrifice he made of his family, his work will be lost to the march of progress and advancements in science. It is then that he decides to give meaning to his life by introducing his daughter Aglaé to the man he was, not the scientist that will be swept into the bin of antiquation.

Adanson describes for Aglaé a life-altering trip from France to colonial Senegal, a place that had not yet been scraped and combed of its natural treasures. While on his hunt for specimens, he meets a village chief who tells of an abduction, a niece lost to him by the slave trade only to reappear as a revenant in another village. Adanson is struck by this story and devises a way to investigate this myth under the cover of research. What he finds will be the last words his mouth utters as he passes through the door of no return.

Diop’s craftsmanship is magnificent with characterization being a favorite aspect of this work. Aglaé’s relationship with her father and his with his Senegalese guide Ndiak are highlights. They are mostly abandoned as Adanson’s pursues a ghost, but that story holds interest as well. As with his award-winning At Night All Blood is Black, Diop crafts a deeply layered story that addresses relationships, loss, and the ravages of colonialism.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

“The Door of No Return” – David Diop (translated from French by Sam Taylor)



Another work of historical fiction from the Booker-winning author of By Night All Blood is Black, my thanks to @netgalley and @farrarstrausgiroux for the free copy. This one will be published on 19th September.



“Beyond the Door of No Return” starts in Paris in 1806. Famed botanist Michel Adanson, lying on his deathbed, mutters a single word before he expires: “Maram”. Soon afterwards, his daughter Aglaé discovers a hidden drawer with secret notebooks about Michel’s time in Senegal, which amount to a confession of his actions there, and specifically his desire for a Senegalese woman, Maram.

The area is under the grip of slave traders, and the locals fear reaching the “door of no return”, the final doorway onto the ships that will send them across the ocean into servitude. At first Michel feels no complicity, as he feels he is on merely a scientific trip to collect botanical samples, but it’s soon clear that he will be unable to stay away from the business of people trading, especially once hears of Miriam and her plight.

Compared to “At Night All Blood Is Black”, a book I generally enjoyed, this felt almost conventional and, frankly, underwhelming. I read a review that compared it to a Grimm fairy tale, one where the plot relies on coincidence throughout, and I certainly found that to be the case. This drew me away from the themes and messages that Diop was trying to make, with his very deliberate choice to focus on the white characters and their exoticism which feels jarring in 2023, with good reason.

I don’t feel this is the strongest work in Diop’s canon, but it might be worth picking up if you loved his previous book. I’m not expecting this to receive the same plaudits, though.

The last book I read in 2021 was At Night All Blood is Black by Diop, and it left a lasting impression (as well as winning the International Booker Prize), so I relished the opportunity to read his newest, translated from the French by Sam Taylor.

It’s very different from his first, and started slow, lacking the same punch I’d experienced before. The language was somehow more formal. As I read, it transformed into a colonial narrative of French botanist Michel Adanson’s trip to Senegal to discover new plant species in the 1750s.

Then, the narrative took a dark turn. It was skillfully done, because on the surface, the action proceeded apace and it was simply the story of one White scientist caught up in adventure in Africa, a young man transported by love of a beautiful woman and the tragic events that followed, even if it was bathed in a toxic male gaze.

But as soon as I saw Adanson as a symbol of the white saviour I couldn’t unsee it, and I suspect this is Diop’s intention. At first I thought to forgive Adanson the egocentric vagaries of youth–albeit a privileged one–but by the end, although I could understand him, I couldn’t forgive him. It was quite monstrous. The coloniser could take whatever he wanted, burn a forest to the ground in his pique, and leave Senegal when his dreams were thwarted. Though railing against slavery when it suited him, he was blind to its injustice on any fundamental level.

Adanson as a symbol is a societal indictment. Even when he thinks that he’s understood all, (“...the corners of our soul are so brightly illuminated that our lies to ourselves no longer have an inch of shade in which they can take refuge, as if exposed to the African sun at its zenith.”), Adanson is still lacking true insight even as he is moved by viewing the painting Portrait of Madeline at the end of the book. To this end, I loved the last chapter, which gave agency to the enslaved, colonised Black female voice. It was a powerful ending, and I recommend the book.

As a young researcher, Michel Adanson travelled to Senegal at the height of the slave trade. The story of Maram and her eventual capture into the slave trade is presented in an almost magical way, as Michel searches for her in the Senegalese countryside. Almost transcendent writing, and enjoyable.

First published in France in 2021; published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 19, 2023

Beyond the Door of No Return is a love story combined with an adventure story, set in the eighteenth century when adventures were still possible and when interracial love was often viewed as an abomination.

The story begins in the third person. Michel Adanson is old and nearing death. He made an academic career as a botanist. To the exclusion of everything else in his life, including marital happiness and a relationship with his daughter Aglaé, he has devoted himself to cataloging the various plants, shellfish, and animals he has encountered on his travels. His hope to publish a 20-volume encyclopedia of nature has been dashed, in part due to lack of interest among academic publishers.

About six months before his death, a broken femur inspires the revelation that over the course of time, Michel’s work will be forgotten, supplanted by “the eternal churn of human beings crashing over one another like waves” that would “bury him under the sands of his ancient science.” What suddenly seems important to Michel is “to figure in the memory of Aglaé as himself and not merely as some immaterial, ghostly scholar.”

To that end, Michel composes the story of an episode that shaped his life, a personal history that he has never shared. He hides the story in a desk, anticipating that Aglaé will care about him enough to decode his clue and find it. She does. The story helps her understand why her father’s last word was “Marak.”

Aglaé’s own story is that of a young woman who craved but did not receive her father’s attention. Her mother forced her into an unwise, short-lived marriage before her second husband, despite his absence of passion, gave her two children during another doomed marriage. Aglaé has come to believe that love and happiness exist only in romantic fiction. It is in this state of mind that Aglaé discovers the notebooks that contain her father’s story. I was disappointed that we do not learn more about Aglaé's reaction to the notebooks after she reads them. She is an important character until she disappears from view.

The novel’s greater focus is on the two stories that Aglaé discovers. One is Michel’s written account of his trip to Senegal when he was a young man in pursuit of botanical knowledge. Guided by Ndiak, son of the king of the Waalo, Michel hears about a revenant named Marak Sek who returned to Africa after being sold into slavery. It turns out that Marak is very much alive, not the walking dead. By coincidence or fate, Marak meets Michel after he falls ill.

The other story is Marak’s, told in the first person to Michel who recounts it in his notebooks. Marak survived two attempted rapes, escaped her confinement, was found and nurtured by a tribal healer, and has taken the healer’s place. While she does not live in her uncle’s village, she accepts the risk that he will find her and return her to the slave trader from whom she escaped. Her uncle’s reputation might be at risk if she is free to reveal his attempted incest.

Marak’s story is filled with harrowing moments. Enraptured by Marak’s beauty and fighting spirit, Michel falls in love with her. Perhaps he feels lust more than love. He denies that he is governed by desire, but the novel does little to explain what other qualities inspire Michel's love. In any event, their relationship propels the adventure story when Marak’s village turns out to be less safe than she had hoped.

Ndiak is the story’s philosopher. He talks about the “what if” moments in life that determine events. What if Michel had been taken to a different village when he fell ill? The chain of events that determined Michel’s and Marak’s lives would have been very different. Those events also change Ndiak’s life by inspiring him to understand the evil that is perpetrated when his fellow Africans sell each other into slavery.

By the end of his stay in Senegal, Michel discovers that European plants adapt nicely to Senegalese soil. Rather than enslaving Africans and exporting them to America, it would have been more profitable to pay Africans to grow sugar at home. Yet Michel knows that nobody wants to disturb the profits generated by the slave trade. Michel feels shame that he does not take an active role in clarifying the economics of slavery. He feels similar shame that, after returning to France, he did not confess his love of a Black woman. As a product of his times, Michel is not an exemplary character, but readers might appreciate his capacity for interracial love and his occasional spark of decency.

For reasons I won’t reveal, Michel’s life moves forward without Marak. The grief of loss cements his dedication to science as an alternative to heartache. He tries to forget but the novel suggests that the heart remembers what the mind chooses to ignore. Michel’s love story proves to be tragic in multiple ways, but an event near the end of his life proves that powerful memories may be suppressed but never forgotten. A work of art, a piece of music, can have “the power to reveal to ourselves our secret humanity.”

The final chapter makes clear that even if the significance of our lives and memories might be lost on others, they are nevertheless important. Michel’s story might be of no consequence to anyone but himself and perhaps Aglaé, yet the novel reminds us that listening to stories of others helps us understand our own lives. Integrating those stories into our own memories and sharing them contributes to a collective understanding of humanity. David Diop makes those points with subtlety in a story that is always interesting, sometimes exciting, and occasionally moving.

RECOMMENDED

This is a layered emotional tale of a white Frenchman who, during a visit to Senegal in the 1750s, fell in love with Maram after hearing her story and who went on a quest for her. Michel's daughter discovers her father's past life when he dies in 1806, and much of it, of course comes as a surprise, That, however, is not the important part of the story (although it is a long preface). This has surprises at several turns. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

This is Sam Taylor's translation of David Diop's La Porte du voyage sans retour, first published in 2021. On the surface, this seems like a straightforward work of historical fiction, a tale set in the 18th-century and centered around a fictional version of the real-life botanist Michel Adanson and his daughter Aglaé. The story takes us to Senegal and a search for a woman believed to have escaped her slave-trafficking captors. The story has a jaunty feel to it, almost like a European-centered adventure story from a century ago. That framing is a deliberate choice by Diop, as is his centering the story on white characters and the blatant exoticism of characters who are Senegalese. It can make for uncomfortable reading in places, which I take to be the point. I've seen this compared unfavorably to Diop's Frère d'âme, but the two books are quite different and I appreciate what Diop is doing here. Thanks to the US publisher, FSG, for a review copy in advance of publication.

Altogether different from his Booker-winning endeavour, Diop's new novel contains all the trappings which made the former so enrapturing. It combines an historical narrative brimming with intrigue with the same tight prose and attention to detail that will have readers hooked.

Beyond the Door of No Return is a tale full of layers. In 1806 Paris, Michel Adanson, a renowned botanist, lies dying. His last words are a repetition of the name Maram. His daughter Aglaé, is in the process of renovating an abandoned Chateau with the funding of her mother's lover and unsure of how best to handle her father's estate, Adanson was a man who threw nothing away.

As Aglaé looks through her father's things she remembers bits of her past and time spent with him. She recalls the separation of her parents, and her father's endless quest to write the encyclopedia (or as he called it the "Universal Orb) of botany, a quest unfinished at his death. One of the items, a nightstand, had a hidden drawer. When Aglaé triggers it, she finds a red portfolio filled with notebooks in her father's hand that begins with a note addressed directly to her.
In this note he offers something of a will, and also states that the journals chronicle his journey through Senegal in the 1750s.

From here we enter Michel's memoirs of his visit to Senegal as one of the white French colonizers, detailing his travel through the different kingdoms of Senegal, his role as a spy, the effects of slavery on the country, and his work to gather samples of plants and animals.

After falling ill on the road, during his recovery Michel is surprised to find himself in love, the repercussions of which set him on the path to where we find him at the beginning of the book.

It is a star-crossed love story. Maram an African woman of noble birth and Michel a white French man. In Michel we see a man traumatized by his experiences, and how his experiences in Senegal shaped his life, such as his squatting instead of sitting in the greenhouse or his obsession with his scholarly work.

There are many layers to the tale, first Michel's own viewpoint, then Aglaé's reading of Michel's memoirs and finally Maram's story as told by Maram and recalled by Michel. Throughout all these tales the specter of colonialism, slavery, greed, religion and the environment loom over the characters.

While not as dark as Diop's prior book, Beyond the Door of No Return draws from history to explore the inhumanity of man to man and the sorrow of seeking something beyond the pale of possibility.

This is David Diop's first novel after winning the International Booker in 2021.

It is relatively straightforward historical fiction and I found the writing less convincing than in 'At Night All Blood Is Black'.

It is a real page-turner though with an intriguing plot: the French Michel Adanson, an 18th-century botanist, leaves his daughter a set of notebooks in which he describes the voyage to Senegal he made as a young researcher. Senegal was a French colony at the time and slave trade was at its peak, but Michel Adanson is more interested in the flora and fauna until he gets completely sidetracked and dives head first into the mystery of a kidnapped girl who is rumoured to have made her way back to Africa after having been sold into slavery and shipped off to America.

A satisfying reading experience, the African setting is highly evocative and I am grateful to Diop for highlighting yet another little-known chapter of colonialism. That being said, for me not a candidate for another IB-win.

Many thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ARC.

3,5

The renowned botanist Michel Arondson dies in France, having spent most of his life focused on his work, trying to make a great encyclopedia, to the exclusion of everything. His estranged daughter Aglaé nevertheless comes to his side, to spend her days with him as he dies. So she is there to hear his final word: “Maram.”

Aglaé is left a confusing mass of objects from his estate, including a hidden notebook telling of her father’s journey to Senegal as a young scientist and his brief encounter with Maram, a Senegalese woman he fell in love with and sought to save, once. The story is at once fantastical and tragic, a doomed love story.

I love Diop’s first book and International Booker winner, and this second one is equally as strong, though not nearly so brutal. Diop can weave a layered story in relatively few words, and leave you breathless.

Where did David Diop go? This certainly isn't the follow up to his Int Booker winning novel, At Night All Blood is Black.

This never really got going and by the second half I was just willing for it to be over as it clearly wasn't going anywhere.

Diop can write, undoubtedly. But it lacked in all areas, specifically, in character and plot development. Crucial elements.

This was a big flop and one that I hope to forget soon. Should Diop have waited a few more years to really perfect his next release after the masterpiece that was At Night All Blood is Black? Probably.