Used book – The Gate of No Return or The Secret Notebooks of Michel Adanson, David Diop

"A great love story. Or how a woman's quest allows a man to rebel against slavery." Les Inrockuptibles "The Gate of No Return" is the nickname given to Gorée Island, from which millions of Africans departed during the time of the slave trade. It is in what was, in 1750, a French concession that a young man disembarks, having come to Senegal to study the local flora. When he hears the story of a young African woman destined for slavery who allegedly managed to escape, his journey and his destiny shift into the obsessive pursuit of this lost woman who left behind a thousand clues and just as many legends.

Born in Paris in 1966, David Diop grew up in Senegal and is a senior lecturer at the University of Pau. He is the author of *At Night All Blood Is Black*, a novel that won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens in 2018 and the International Booker Prize in 2021.