Yaa Gyasi

An alternate cover edition can be found here. A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction. Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation. Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.

Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief--a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

Gifty studerar neurovetenskap vid Stanforduniversitetet och utför avancerad forskning i syfte att finna en medicinsk behandling mot depression och beroende. Hennes bror Nana var en lovande idrottsman men blev beroende av OxyContin efter en fotskada, vilket fick oerhörda konsekvenser. Hennes deprimerade mor lämnar sällan sängen, svårt traumatiserad efter flytten till USA. Gifty bestämmer sig för att finna den naturvetenskapliga förklaringen till den olycka som drabbat dem som står henne närmast. Samtidigt lockas hon allt mer tillbaka till sitt eget och sin familjs ghananska ursprung. Finns hoppet om en lösning snarare i detta sökande än i hennes avancerade forskningsprojekt? Yaa Gyasis nya roman efter världsframgången med Vända hem är ett starkt berörande porträtt av en familj i USA som präglas av emigration, av depression, av beroende och sorg. Det är en roman om tro, vetenskap, religion och kärlek. Det är en oförglömlig läsupplevelse av den amerikanska litteraturens nya stjärnskott.

Yaa Gyasi brakdebuterte i USA med denne romanen i 2016. Komme hjem begynner med historien om to halvsøstre som bor i hver sin landsby i det vestlige Afrika på 1700-tallet, i området vi i dag kjenner som Ghana. Effia blir gift med en britisk slavehandler. Esi selges som slave og sendes til Amerika. Vi følger søstrenes etterkommere over 300 år, og over to kontinenter. Arven etter slaveriet preger generasjonene etter Esi og Effia helt frem til nåtiden, som et minne som for alltid er skrevet inn i slektens liv.

Primera novela de la escritora estadounidense de origen ghanés Yaa Gyasi, la trama de esta cautivante historia de hondo calado humano se desarrolla en la costa suroccidental de África —la actual República de Ghana— y en Norteamérica desde el siglo XVIII hasta la presente. Hijas de una misma madre y de padres pertenecientes a dos etnias distintas, Effia y Esi son dos hermanas de sangre que nunca llegarán a conocerse. Sus caminos están irremediablemente destinados a separarse: así, mientras Effia es obligada a casarse con un gobernador inglés y a residir en una fortaleza junto a la costa, Esi es capturada y enviada como esclava al sur de Estados Unidos. La narración va trazando, pues, el devenir de las dos ramas de la familia, protagonistas de conmovedoras historias de aflicción, esperanza y superación en el marco de una serie de relevantes acontecimientos históricos: las guerras tribales, el negocio del cacao, la llegada de los misioneros, la Ley de Esclavos Fugitivos de 1850, la Gran Migración Negra, la lucha por los derechos civiles y el renacimiento de Harlem en los años veinte, hasta llegar a la epidemia de heroína de los setenta. Recibida con entusiasmo desbordante en Norteamérica, Inglaterra y Francia, la crítica especializada de ambos lados del Atlántico celebró la llegada de una voz nueva, límpida y potente, dotada de un especial talento para acercar al lector el microcosmos de los sentimientos más íntimos del individuo en su desigual lucha ante la aplastante fuerza de la Historia. Una lectura apasionante, diríamos irrenunciable, que sirve de carta de presentación de una nueva generación de autores de origen africano que, sin duda, dejada huella en la literatura de este siglo.