Beyond The Door of No Return

'At once melancholy and luminous' - Le Monde

'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' - Telerama

'A humanist meditation anchored in African tradition... A historical epic with a bewitching style... A superb adventure story' - Femina

'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' -Maaza Mengiste, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Shadow King


'Masterful storytelling... A mesmerizing tale' -Kirkus, starred review


'A captivating intergenerational epic influenced by Senegalese oral tradition' -Publishers Weekly, starred review


'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


'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



'Offers a portrait of a world in which beauty and brutality co-exist' -Mail on Sunday


'Gripping... A twisty novel' -Literary Review


'Diop's poetic sensibility marks every sentence of this resonant story [...] a writer of multiple talents; a profound and eloquent poet, a powerful storyteller led by memorable, believable characters, and a passionate advocate for voices less heard and stories less told' -Big Issue


'Further endorsement of fiction's ability for revelation... There is suspense, adversity and tension' -The Irish Times