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Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself. Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portraits, Homegoing is a searing and profound debut from a masterly new writer.
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Selected for Granta's Best of Young American Novelists 2017. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best First Book. Shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.
Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself. Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portraits, Homegoing is a searing and profound debut from a masterly new writer.
Closing date: 04/10/2020
Homegoing is a novel I wish I could have read when I was a young woman. An intelligent, beautiful and healing read, destined to become a classic -- Zadie Smith
Shows the unmistakable touch of a gifted writer The New Yorker
One of the richest, most rewarding reads of 2016 Elle
Homegoing is one hell of a book... I recommend Homegoing without reservation. Definitely a must read for 2016. -- Roxane Gay
I think I needed to read a book like this to remember what is possible. I think I needed to remember what happens when you pair a gifted literary mind to an epic task. Homegoing is an inspiration -- Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Book Award winning author of 'Between the World and Me
Wildly ambitious debut by a 26-year-old writer . . . It's impossible not to admire the ambition and scope of Homegoing . . . By its conclusion, the characters tales of loss and resilience have acquired an inexorable and cumulative emotional weight -- Michiko Kakutani New York Times
A marvellous novel Starred Publishers Weekly
The brilliance of this structure, in which we know more than the characters do about the fate of their parents and children, pays homage to the vast scope of slavery without losing sight of its private devastation . . . . [Toni Morrison's] influence is palpable in Gyasi's historicity and lyricism; she shares Morrison's uncanny ability to crystalize, in a single event, slavery's moral and emotional fallout. What is uniquely Gyasi's is her ability to connect it so explicitly to the present day: No novel has better illustrated the way in which racism became institutionalized in this country. Vogue US
Homegoing is a remarkable feat - a novel at once epic and intimate, capturing the moral weight of history as it bears down on individual struggles, hopes and fears. A tremendous debut Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment
[A] commanding debut . . . will stay with you long after you've finished reading. When people talk about all the things fiction can teach its readers, they're talking about books like this Marie Claire
Rarely does a grand, sweeping epic plumb interior lives so thoroughly. Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing is a marvel. -- Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness
Homegoing is an epic novel in every sense of the word - spanning three centuries, Homegoing is a sweeping account of two half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana and the lives of their many generations of descendants in America. A stunning, unforgettable account of family, history, and racism, Homegoing is an ambitious work that lives up to the hype. Buzzfeed
Gyasi gives voice, and an empathetic ear, to the ensuing seven generations of flawed and deeply human descendants, creating a patchwork mastery of historical fiction Elle
Gyasi echoes [James] Baldwin's understanding of a common culture marked by both yearning and pain, in which black people can confront each other across differences and reach a political understanding about what unites them. What distinguishes Gyasi's presentation of this idea is its scope: She does not present us with a single moment, but rather delivers a multigenerational saga in which two branches of a family, separated by slavery and time, emerge from the murk of history in a romantic embrace . . . . . Homegoing is a reminder of the tenacity of fathers and mothers who struggle to keep their kin alive. The novel succeeds when it retrieves individual lives from the oblivion mandated by racism and spins the story of the family's struggle to survive. Bookforum
A memorable epic of changing families and changing nations Chicago Tribune
Epic...astonishing...page-turning Entertainment Weekly
ISBN: 9780241975237
Publication date: 05/10/2017
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780241242728
Publication date: 01/01/2017
Publisher:
Format: Hardback
| ISBN: | 9780241975237 |
| Publication date: | 5th October 2017 |
| Author: | Yaa Gyasi |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 320 pages |
| Genres: | Debuts, eBook Favourites, Family Drama, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Diverse Voices, |
| Categories: | Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), |
Yaa Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in African American Review, Guernica and Callaloo. Homegoing is her first novel.
More About Yaa Gyasi
