From the author of Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones comes a tour de force of historical recreation as enslaved Annis tells her harrowing yet ultimately hopeful story from the Carolina rice fields to the Louisiana sugar plantations.
Signed Edition
A Standard Edition is also available
'Let us descend, and enter his blind world' - Dante's Inferno
Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.
Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land - the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward's most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781526669575
Number of pages: 336
Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm
This wonderful book will stay with me for a very long time. I’ve read many slave narratives but this works on a new level of consciousness; beyond the chains, the fear and the brutality, to a spiritual, beautiful and... More
This is a book that deserves world-wide recognition. Although a work of fiction, Jesmyn Ward has created a vivid record of one woman's personal experience of slavery, in her own voice. At one point, Annis... More
This is the fourth novel by Jesmyn Ward who has already won the US National Book award for Fiction with her previous two novels “Salvage The Bones” and “Sing, Unburied Sing” which was also Women’s Prize shortlisted in... More
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