ExtendedSession Presents

Yaa Gyasi

in conversation with Esi Edugyan

Celebrating the paperback release of

Transcendent Kingdom

Recorded: 07/16/2021

ExtendedSession Presents

Yaa Gyasi

in conversation with Esi Edugyan

Celebrating the paperback release of

Transcendent Kingdom

Recorded: 07/16/2021

Join Yaa Gyasi live in conversation with Esi Edugyan live to celebrate the new paperback release of her New York Times bestseller Transcendent Kingdom.

“Gyasi sometimes reminds me of other writers who’ve addressed the immigrant experience in America–Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li in particular…. As in the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or the Ghanaian-American short-story writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the African immigrants in this novel exist at a certain remove from American racism, victims but also outsiders, marveling at the peculiar blindnesses of the locals…brilliant… Transcendent Kingdom trades the blazing brilliance of Homegoing for another type of glory, more granular and difficult to name. “ -Nell Freudenberger, The New York Times Book Review
“A book of blazing brilliance … of profound scientific and spiritual reflection that recalls the works of Richard Powers and Marilynne Robinson… A double helix of wisdom and rage twists through the quiet lines…Thank God, we have this remarkable novel. “ -Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Soon to be out in paperback, Yaa Gyasi’s stunning novel Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief—a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Join this celebrated author live and online with Esi Edugyan as together they celebrate this exquisitely written, emotionally searing, exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut

About Transcendent Kingdom

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed.

Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But 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.

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Yaa Gyasi

About Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian-American novelist. Her debut novel, Homegoing, published in 2016, won her, at the age of 26, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first book of fiction, the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" honors for 2016 and the American Book Award. She was awarded a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature in 2020.

Esi Edugyan

About Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan is author of the novels The Second Life of Samuel Tyne and Half-Blood Blues, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

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