Reviews

Reise ohne Wiederkehr oder Die geheimen Hefte des Michel Adanson: Roman by David Diop

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anseq's review against another edition

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reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

angelackrueger's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

mt_gilley's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

A beguiling, evocative book from the author of At Night All Blood is Black. The story is wrapped in a few layers, and takes a while to come into focus, but when it does it has a feverish sensuality, and a horrible sense of inevitability. It impressively feels like it finds a unique perspective on colonialism in 18th century Africa, and cleverly sites it in a story that is otherwise romantic and epic - power corrupts all relationships, it kills hope and promise, and rots even those who benefit from it.

Content Warnings

jasoncfish's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

raquelr212's review against another edition

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medium-paced

4.0

pilebythebed's review against another edition

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4.0

Winner of the International Booker Prize David Diop returns with a novel that explores colonialism and the slave trade. Beyond the Door of No Return (translated by Sam Taylor) opens in France in the early 19th Century but the bulk of the novel is set in Senegal over fifty years earlier. The narrative focusses on a real person – botanist Michel Adanson - whose life work was to create a classification system for nature.
Beyond the Door of No Return opens with Adanson’s death in Paris. His daughter Aglaé takes possession of his effects and hidden in a cabinet she finds a notebook detailing an experience he had in Senegal in the 1740s. Adanson’s official travels and collections in Senegal are on the record but these “secret” diaries tell a very different, much more personal story and hint at why Adanson buried himself in his work on his return to France. While in Senegal on a collecting tour, Adanson is told of a woman called Maram who had been sold into slavery but who, rumour has it, has returned three years later. Accompanied by the teenage son of one of the local kings, Adanson sets out to find this woman, plus do a little spying for the French East India Company on the way. The bulk of the book is Adanson’s journey to find Maram and what happens when he does so, including her own tragic story. The nesting of stories places Maram’s tale squarely in the centre, echoing both forward and back and impacting on both the Adanson’s life and the life of his family.
The door of no return is a real place – it is the door through which slaves from Senegal passed on their way to the Americas. Through this story Diop tries to give an insight into the role of the French and English colonists in driving the slave trade but also the local politics that supported it. Even though through the eyes of a white man who does not accept the spiritual aspects of the events that he is a part of, Diop manages to give a nuanced view of the situation in Senegal at that time. This is particularly through Adanson’s interactions and conversations with Maram and his young companion Ndiak.
Beyond The Door of No Return is a powerful historical novel that is able to provide new insights into a time and place and once again expose the barbarity and hypocrisy of the slave trade, a terrible aspect of world history that should be continually remembered and continues to reverberate.