La porta del viatge sense retorn

In 1749, the French botanist Michel Adanson landed in Senegal to study the flora as part of his research to prepare a large encyclopedia. He will remain there until 1753, the year in which he returns to Europe. So much for the strictly historical facts. From there, the novelist David Diop imagines the existence of secret diaries written by the naturalist during his transformative African stay; a diary that, after his death, will end up in the hands of his daughter Aglaé. What do those pages that remained hidden for so many years contain? The life experiences of a scientist who traveled to Africa in search of exotic plants and met people; the testimony of someone who moved to another country to study nature and encountered the pain of human beings. In Senegal, Adanson will meet Maram Seck, a young woman of the Wolof ethnic group who rebels against her destiny as a slave after her uncle has sold her in exchange for a rifle. The botanist will discover a worldview very different from his own, which will transform him forever, and he will learn of the existence of the island of Gorea, where traffickers loaded ships bound for America with slaves. It was the door to the journey of no return... David Diop has written an adventure book from a new perspective: that of the colonized. Through the eyes of an enlightened European who disembarks in Africa, he offers us a splendid postcolonial novel, which is not only the denunciation of many injustices, but also the story of a journey to the depths of human consciousness and understanding of the world in all its complexity.