Paperback

‘A gripping, galloping narrative that challenges perceptions to the very last page’, Marie Claire

‘David Diop has opened up a new way of thinking about the eighteenth century and its hideous cruelties’, Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

‘It’s hard to imagine a more gripping or fertile subject’, Guardian

Prais, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson is dying. His last word is a woman’s name: Maram.

But who was she?

Searching for the answer, Adanson’s daughter discovers a journal of his youthful travels in Senegal, which tells a story of wild adventure and impossible desires. It reveals how he heard of a young woman sold into slavery who did the impossible and returned. How he became obsessed with finding her, whatever the cost.

And how a man who longed to solve the mysteries of natural instead found himself grappling with the impulses of the heart.