Some might tell you that this is a novel about the irreconcilable nature of religion and science, as Gifty had an extremely religious childhood and now practices neuroscience, questioning all the time how all of the experiences of her life can be true and valid. The novel flashes between past and present as Gifty tells us her history and tries to find a way to help her mother. Her mother, who has fallen into a severe bout of depression, is sleeping in Gifty’s bed and not eating much.

Despite (or perhaps in spite) of all that, she’s pushed herself through a prestigious higher education, and now she’s a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at medical school, studying addiction in mice. Transcendent Kingdom is a novel about a woman named Gifty, from a Ghanian immigrant family wracked by abandonment, addiction, overdose, and struggles with mental health.

The sour fruit remains.”īig thanks to Knopf and Libro.fm for the complimentary audiobook of this one! I listened to it in the car on a road trip, and it was perfect. Without context, it is nothing, does nothing. “When I was very little, my mother took to calling me asaa, the miracle berry that, when eaten first, turns sour things sweet. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanain immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief - a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.īut even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on Ox圜ontin.

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction.

Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.

Transcendent kingdom yaa gyasi review