Yaa Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. Her first novel, Homegoing, was a Sunday Times bestseller, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2017 Yaa Gyasi was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists and in 2019 the BBC selected her debut as one of the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World.
I need a book like this to remember what is possible If you want to know why the world is this way, try this book for starters * Naomi Alderman, author of The Power * A stirringly gifted writer. It's impossible not to admire the ambition and scope of Homegoing * New York Times * Remarkable, a devastating account of America . . . explores horror without ever losing sight of humanity or hope * Sunday Times on 'Homegoing' * The range Gyasi displays in just two books is staggering * USA Today * Gyasi's second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, is a very different book, and, I think, a better one - contemporary, personal, acutely focused on a single family, and intensely felt * New Yorker * Meticulous, psychologically complex ... At once a vivid evocation of the immigrant experience and a sharp delineation of an individual's inner struggle, the novel brilliantly succeeds on both counts * Publishers Weekly, starred review * With deft agility and undeniable artistry, Gyasi's latest is an eloquent examination of resilient survival * Booklist * Absolutely transcendent. A gorgeously woven narrative about a woman trying to survive the grief of a brother lost to addiction and a mother trapped in depression while pursuing her ambitions. Not a word or idea out of place. Completely different from Homegoing. THE RANGE. I am quite angry this is so good * Roxane Gay * I would say that TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM is a novel for our time (and it is) but it is so much more than that. It is a novel for all times. The splendor and heart and insight and brilliance contained in the pages holds up a light the rest of us can follow * Ann Patchett * A book of blazing brilliance . . . A double helix of wisdom and rage twists through the quiet lines of this novel. Yaa Gyasi is one of the most enlightening novelists writing today * Washington Post * A powerful, wholly unsentimental novel about family love, loss, belonging and belief that is more focused but just as daring as its predecessor, and to my mind even more successful * Wall Street Journal *