David Diop, return to Senegal in the Age of Enlightenment and Shadows

Writer David Diop in studio at RFI (September 2021).

© Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint / RFI

By: Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint

1 min

Born in Paris in 1966, David Diop grew up in Senegal and is a lecturer at the University of Pau.

He signs his third novel with “The Door of the Unreturned Journey”, after the success of “Frère d'âme” (winner of the Goncourt Prize for High School Students 2018, the International Booker Prize 2021 and translated into more than one thirty countries).

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The door to the journey of no return © Seuil

"The door to the journey of no return"

is the nickname given to the island of Gorée, from which millions of Africans left during the time of the black slave trade.

It is in what is in 1750 a French concession that a young man arrives, 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 the Enlightenment.

When he hears the story of a young African woman promised to slavery and who would have managed to escape, finding refuge somewhere on the borders of Senegalese land, her journey and her destiny switch to the obstinate quest for this lost woman who left behind a thousand tracks and as many legends.

Inspired by the figure of Michel Adanson, French naturalist (1727-1806), David Diop signs a dazzling novel, powerful evocation of a kingdom where the word is queen, overwhelming odyssey of two beings who never cease to meet, of to love oneself and to lose oneself, transmission of an inheritance from a father to his daughter, ultimate recipient of the notebooks which relate this hidden journey. "

(Presentation of the

Editions du Seuil

)

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  • Literature

  • Senegal

  • France

  • Story

  • Slavery

  • Culture

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