Given the arrest of more than 100 Columbia and Barnard students on campus by the NYPD, the numerous student suspensions and expulsions from student housing, and the administration's increasing restrictions on access to campus, public events at the Maison Francaise are cancelled for the near future. Thank you for your understanding.
Beyond the Door of No Return (trans. by Sam Taylor, Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2023)
Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman’s name: Maram. The key to this mysterious woman’s identity is Andanson’s unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal. Drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegal’s oral traditions, David Diop takes the readers, throughout his novel, on an exciting journey into the Senegalese bush and tells us a love story like few others.
Beyond the Door of No Return was released in the United States in September 2023. Find more information here.
David Diop was born in Paris and raised in Senegal. He is the Head of the Arts, Languages and Literature Department at the University of Pau, where his research includes such topics as eighteenth-century French literature and European representation of Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 2021, David Diop received the International Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his second novel, At Night All Blood Is Black (Frère d’âme, Seuil; trans. by Anna Moschovakis, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020). His latest book, Beyond the Door of No Return was shortlisted for the 2023 National Book Award.
Laurence Marie is a Lecturer in the Department of French at Columbia. A specialist of 18th century literature, theater and the arts, and the history of emotions, she is the author of Inventer l’acteur. Emotions et spectacle dans l’Europe des Lumières and of two new books: a new Folio Classique (Gallimard) edition of Diderot's Paradox of Acting and Les paradoxes du comédien. Cinquante regards sur le métier d'acteur (Gallimard, Hors série littérature).
This event is organized by the Columbia Maison Française. It is part of Villa Albertine’s Authors on Tour program. David Diop’s 2024 US tour is made possible by Villa Albertine and New Directions.
