Homegoing (Penguin Fiction) - Softcover

Gyasi, Yaa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241980445 ISBN 13: 9780241980446

Publisher: Penguin, 2017

Synopsis

Selected for Granta's Best of Young American Novelists 2017Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best First BookShortlisted 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.

About this title

Review

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)

From the Back Cover

'Homegoing is an inspiration' Ta Nehisi Coates, National Book Award winning author of 'Between the World and Me'

'A stirringly gifted writer... magical... the great, aching gift of the novel is that it offers, in its own way, the very thing that enslavement denied its descendants; the possibility of imagining the connection between the broken threads of their origins.' Isabel Wilkerson, The New York Times Book Review

'The speed with which Gyasi sweeps across the decades isn't confusing so much as dazzling, creating a kind of time-elapsed photo of black lives in America and in the motherland... truly captivating.' Ron Charles, Washington Post

'Remarkable... compelling... powerful.' Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe

'Tremendous...spectacular...[HOMEGOING is] essential reading' SF Chronicle

'A blazing success...' Steph Cha, Los Angeles Times

'[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.' Steph Opitz, Marie Claire

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0241980445
• ISBN 13: 9780241980446
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320