Beyond the Door of No Return

A deceased parent bequeaths a jumble of books and antique furniture to a daughter, who discovers his journals in a secret drawer. While this could be a tired trope, in the hands of Diop (At Night All Blood Is Black), botanist Michel Adanson’s revelatory musings are a joy to read. He confesses that his single-minded pursuit of a scientific legacy, to the detriment of his wife and their daughter Aglaé, seems inconsequential at the end of life. Adanson wants Aglaé to know the heart of the 23-year-old scientist who left Paris for Senegal in the mid-1700s, searching for plants but discovering and embracing the culture, a vibrant language, and a people who honor their dead with stories rather than monuments. His youthful imagination, sparked by the legend of Maram, the only woman to have returned from the Americas after being sold into enslavement, takes Adanson on a fateful quest likened to that of Orpheus for his Eurydice. Diop explores the nature of love, passion, prejudice, and memory through Adanson’s all-encompassing obsession with Maram.