Born in Paris in 1966, David Diop grew up in Senegal and is a lecturer at the University of Pau. He signs, withThe Gate of the Journey of No Return», his third novel, after the success of «soul brother(winner of the 2018 Goncourt des Lycéens prize, the 2021 International Booker Prize and translated into more than thirty countries). (Replay)
“The door to the journey of no return” is the nickname given to the island of Gorée, from where millions of Africans left during the slave trade. It was in what in 1750 was a French concession that a young man landed, who had come to Senegal to study the local flora. A botanist, he cherishes the dream of establishing a universal encyclopedia of living things, in a century when the time has come for Enlightenment. When he hears of the story of a young African woman destined for slavery and who managed to escape, finding refuge somewhere at the edge of the Senegalese land, her journey and her destiny change in the obstinate quest for this lost woman who left behind her a thousand tracks and as many legends.
Inspired by the figure of Michel Adanson, French naturalist (1727-1806), David Diop signs a dazzling novel, a powerful evocation of a kingdom where the word is king, a moving odyssey of two beings who never stop coming together, to love each other and to lose each other, transmission of a heritage from a father to his daughter, the ultimate recipient of the notebooks which relate this hidden journey.” (Presentation of editions of the Threshold).