Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
Audible sample
Transcendent Kingdom: A novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, September 1, 2020
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.
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.
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. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherKnopf
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 2020
- Dimensions5.97 x 1.24 x 9.53 inches
- ISBN-100525658181
- ISBN-13978-0525658184
Customers who bought this item also bought
- Vocabulary from Latin and Greek Roots: Level XIIElizabeth OsbornePaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $49 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Thursday, Oct 17
- NEW-Homegoing (Lead Title)PaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $49 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Thursday, Oct 17Only 9 left in stock - order soon.
- We read the Bible how we want to read it. It doesn’t change, but we do.Highlighted by 3,864 Kindle readers
- But the memory lingered, the lesson I have never quite been able to shake: that I would always have something to prove and that nothing but blazing brilliance would be enough to prove it.Highlighted by 2,616 Kindle readers
- My memories of him, though few, are mostly pleasant, but memories of people you hardly know are often permitted a kind of pleasantness in their absence. It’s those who stay who are judged the harshest, simply by virtue of being around to be judged.Highlighted by 2,176 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
|
|
|
---|---|---|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK!
FINALIST FOR WOMEN'S FICTION PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Harper’s Bazaar ● NPR ● Good Housekeeping ● Glamour ● Book Riot ● Library Journal ● Washington Post ● Amazon ● Marie Claire ● Kirkus Reviews ● Vanity Fair ● Entertainment Weekly ● Town and Country ● Indigo ● BBC ● USA Today ● Parade ● Real Simple ● Apartment Therapy ● Refinery29
"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
“The novel is full of brilliantly revealing moments, sometimes funny, often poignant.... [Gifty is] provokingly vital.”
—James Wood, The New Yorker
"Yaa Gyasi’s profoundly moving second novel takes place in the vast, fragile landscape where the mysteries of God and the certainties of science collide. Through deliberate and precise prose, the book becomes an expansive meditation on grief, religion, and family."
—The Boston Globe
"Laser-like... 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… [Transcendent Kingdom] is burningly dedicated to the question of meaning… The pressure created gives her novel a hard, beautiful, diamantine luster.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"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
"A luminous, heartbreaking and redemptive American story, Transcendent Kingdom is the mark of a brilliant writer who is just getting started."
—Seattle Times
"If You Read One Book This Year, Make It Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom."
—Pop Sugar
"A stealthily devastating novel of family, faith and identity that’s as philosophical as it is personal... It’s bravura storytelling by Gyasi, so different in scope, tone and style from her 2016 debut Homegoing. That, too, was brilliant literature, as expansive as Transcendent Kingdom is interior...The range Gyasi displays in just two books is staggering."
—USA Today
"“Elegant... burrows into the philosophical, exploring with complexity what it might mean for us to live without firm answers to the mysteries that wound us... The measured restraint of Gyasi’s prose makes the story’s challenging questions all the more potent."
—The San Francisco Chronicle
"Poised to be the literary event of the fall."
—Entertainment Weekly
"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
"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
"[Transcendent Kingdom] will stay with you long after you’ve finished it."
—Real Simple
"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]
"Gyasi’s wise second novel pivots toward intimacy... In precise prose, Gyasi creates an ache of recognition, especially for readers knowledgeable about the wreckage of addiction. Still, she leavens this nonlinear novel with sly humor... The author is astute about childhood grandiosity and a pious girl’s deep desire to be good; she conveys in brief strokes the notched, nodding hook of heroin’s oblivion...final chapter that gives readers a taste of hard-won deliverance."
—Kirkus Reviews [starred review]
"Unforgettable... Transcendent Kingdom has an expansive scope that ranges into fresh, relevant territories—much like the title, which suggests a better world beyond the life we inhabit."
—BookPage [starred review]
"With deft agility andundeniable artistry, Gyasi’s latest is an eloquent examination of resilient survival."
—Booklist
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Whenever I think of my mother, I picture a queen-sized bed with her lying in it, a practiced stillness filling the room. For months on end, she colonized that bed like a virus, the first time, when I was child and then again when I was a graduate student. The first time, I was sent to Ghana to wait her out. While there, I was walking through Kejetia market with my aunt when she grabbed my arm and pointed. “Look a crazy person,” she said in Twi. “Do you see? A crazy person.”
I was mortified. My aunt was speaking so loudly, and the man, tall with dust caked into his dreadlocks, was within earshot. “I see. I see,” I answered in a low hiss. The man continued past us, mumbling to himself as he waved his hands about in gestures that only he could understand. My aunt nodded, satisfied, and we kept walking past the hordes of people gathered in that agoraphobia-inducing market until we reached the stall where we would spend the rest of the morning attempting to sell knock-off handbags. In my three months there, we sold only four bags.
Even now, I don’t completely understand why my aunt singled the man out to me. Maybe she thought there were no crazy people in America, that I had never seen one before. Or maybe she was thinking about my mother, about the real reason I was stuck in Ghana that summer, sweating in a stall with an aunt I hardly knew while my mother healed at home in Alabama. I was eleven, and I could see that my mother wasn’t sick, not in the ways that I was used to. I didn’t understand what my mother needed healing from. I didn’t understand, but I did. And my embarrassment at my aunt’s loud gesture had as much to do with my understanding as it did with the man who had passed us by. My aunt was saying, “That. That is what crazy looks like.” But instead what I heard was my mother’s name. What I saw was my mother’s face, still as lake water, the pastor’s hand resting gently on her forehead, his prayer a light hum that made the room buzz. I’m not sure I know what crazy looks like, but even today when I hear the word I picture a split screen, the dreadlocked man in Kejetia on one side, my mother lying in bed on the other. I think about how no one at all reacted to that man in the market, not in fear or disgust, nothing, save my aunt who wanted me to look. He was, it seemed to me, at perfect peace, even as he gesticulated wildly, even as he mumbled.
But my mother, in her bed, infinitely still, was wild inside.
Product details
- Publisher : Knopf; First Edition (September 1, 2020)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0525658181
- ISBN-13 : 978-0525658184
- Item Weight : 1.24 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.97 x 1.24 x 9.53 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #347,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,363 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
- #6,002 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #19,308 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. Her debut novel, Homegoing, was awarded 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 lives in Brooklyn.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book engaging, contemplative, and memorable. They praise the writing quality as skillful, beautiful, and easy to read. Readers describe the narration as insightful and relatable. They also mention the emotional depth is heart wrenching, heartfelt, and poignant. Opinions are mixed on the pacing, with some finding it well-paced and multi-layered, while others feel it lacks momentum.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book engaging, contemplative, and memorable. They say it holds their attention and the main character is believable.
"...What a gift this book is. Be patient with it--it's a slower, more contemplative read, but provides so many thinking--and talking points--and will..." Read more
"...were times I felt the story was moving a bit slow, but overall, worth the read. I recommend." Read more
"...It leaves the reader with a happy feeling, but doesn’t exactly answer all life’s questions that have been raised in the book...." Read more
"This novel was a fantastic read...." Read more
Customers find the writing quality of the book skillfully and beautiful. They also say the author's writing reads like liquid, capturing the truth. Readers appreciate the author's style and observational nature. Overall, they describe the book as an easy read and beautiful.
"...Yaa Gyasi is an immensely talented writer who tells a dark story with such luminous grace and compassion...." Read more
"...Overall, I thought this was a beautiful book and I’m looking forward to reading her other book Homegoing soon..." Read more
"...It’s really closer to 4.5 though. The author’s writing reads like liquid, just pouring out with meaning, capturing the truth in moments without..." Read more
"...Writing was stilted at times." Read more
Customers find the book insightful, relatable, and philosophically deep. They say it's interesting, pouring out with meaning, and touches on complex themes such as family, religion, and science. Readers also mention the book combines science and religion.
"...Told in first person, TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM is an intimate portrayal of faith, science, dysfunction, family, love, immigration, loss, grief, guilt,..." Read more
"...Wanted Son — Unwanted DaughterThe book’s narration provides an insightful exploration of life’s dilemmas in language that will provide a fresh..." Read more
"...of my favorite things about this book is that there are tons of quotes that are so profound that I highlighted AND underlined them...." Read more
"...The author’s writing reads like liquid, just pouring out with meaning, capturing the truth in moments without being heavy handed...." Read more
Customers find the writing gorgeous, heart-wrenching, and heartfelt. They say the story is poignant, subtle in its portrayal of trauma, and loving. Readers also mention the tenderness from the daughter to the mother is intense.
"...and so much more are discussed and not discussed in a beautiful, gripping way." Read more
"...Slow, objective, measured, interrupted by desires/hope, defeated and withdrawn on the surface but persistently, desperately seeking something to..." Read more
"A beautifully moving story, tragic but reflective as well...." Read more
"...Guess that means it drew me in! I enjoyed the story. I found it emotional and compelling as well as thoughtfully written...." Read more
Customers find the characters thoroughly developed.
"...Well rendered characters." Read more
"...I found the characters relatable and multidimensional, and the plot riveting even though the story jumps between three different developmental..." Read more
"...Finding it a tedious slog actually, without particularly compelling characters or storyline...." Read more
"...The characters in this novel are fleshed out, and the story is as real as it can be...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some mention it's well-paced, multilayered, and riveting. Others say it lacks momentum and is boring.
"...It was kind of a slow story with no real climax and then a sudden ending with resolution. It was meh." Read more
"...There were times I felt the story was moving a bit slow, but overall, worth the read. I recommend." Read more
"...Slow, objective, measured, interrupted by desires/hope, defeated and withdrawn on the surface but persistently, desperately seeking something to..." Read more
"...The book is kind of slow at times; it switches between present moments and then the past- which was a lot for me...." Read more
Reviews with images
Luninously told tale of depression, addiction, dysfunction
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
I had a feeling I would like TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM (Knopf, September 2020), I had no idea how much I would *LOVE* TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM. Yaa Gyasi is an immensely talented writer who tells a dark story with such luminous grace and compassion.
Quick take: Gifty is a sixth-year neuroscience PhD candidateat the Stanford University School of Medicine. She's studying the reward-seeking behavior of mice and the neural circuits in depression and anxiety and addiction, and with good reason. As often the case, many scientists study what they study because they have somehow been touched by the issues personally. In Gifty's case, it's her family members who have.
Gifty's brother, Nana, was a talented athlete with much promise, but before all of that, the family immigrated from Ghana to Alabama (and then on to California). Here, we become immersed in the deep south, the unique aspects of sports in this part of the country, but also religion and racism. Still, Gifty is a thoughtful observer, brilliant in her own right, and is plagued with many of her own questions of spirituality and science, guilt, and more. As Gifty grows older, she is determined to discover the scientific basis for suffering--of which she is keenly aware.
The structure of TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM meanders and spirals, there is no direct path, and this, I think adds to the story. We see, first-hand Gifty's evolution and journey in becoming the woman she is in the end, because all of these events--our childhood shape us.
Told in first person, TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM is an intimate portrayal of faith, science, dysfunction, family, love, immigration, loss, grief, guilt, and so much more. I had to remind myself that this is not a memoir, although I think it's evident the author borrowed from her own experiences, as we writers tend to do.
What a gift this book is. Be patient with it--it's a slower, more contemplative read, but provides so many thinking--and talking points--and will most certainly leave a residue.
I was reminded, in part, of the work of Chloe Benjamin in THE IMMORTALISTS (particularly the science pieces) but also some connection to Maya Shanbhag Lang's WHAT WE CARRY meets Cara Wall's THE DEARLY BELOVED.
L.Lindsay|Always with a Book
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2021
I had a feeling I would like TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM (Knopf, September 2020), I had no idea how much I would *LOVE* TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM. Yaa Gyasi is an immensely talented writer who tells a dark story with such luminous grace and compassion.
Quick take: Gifty is a sixth-year neuroscience PhD candidateat the Stanford University School of Medicine. She's studying the reward-seeking behavior of mice and the neural circuits in depression and anxiety and addiction, and with good reason. As often the case, many scientists study what they study because they have somehow been touched by the issues personally. In Gifty's case, it's her family members who have.
Gifty's brother, Nana, was a talented athlete with much promise, but before all of that, the family immigrated from Ghana to Alabama (and then on to California). Here, we become immersed in the deep south, the unique aspects of sports in this part of the country, but also religion and racism. Still, Gifty is a thoughtful observer, brilliant in her own right, and is plagued with many of her own questions of spirituality and science, guilt, and more. As Gifty grows older, she is determined to discover the scientific basis for suffering--of which she is keenly aware.
The structure of TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM meanders and spirals, there is no direct path, and this, I think adds to the story. We see, first-hand Gifty's evolution and journey in becoming the woman she is in the end, because all of these events--our childhood shape us.
Told in first person, TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM is an intimate portrayal of faith, science, dysfunction, family, love, immigration, loss, grief, guilt, and so much more. I had to remind myself that this is not a memoir, although I think it's evident the author borrowed from her own experiences, as we writers tend to do.
What a gift this book is. Be patient with it--it's a slower, more contemplative read, but provides so many thinking--and talking points--and will most certainly leave a residue.
I was reminded, in part, of the work of Chloe Benjamin in THE IMMORTALISTS (particularly the science pieces) but also some connection to Maya Shanbhag Lang's WHAT WE CARRY meets Cara Wall's THE DEARLY BELOVED.
L.Lindsay|Always with a Book
At this book's beginning we meet our narrator named Gifty who is nearing the end of her doctoral neuroscience research project at Stanford, and her clinically depressed mother has recently moved to California to live with her daughter. From this beginning point the book's narrative switches to recollections from Gifty’s past life growing up in Huntsville, Alabama. Gifty’s parents were immigrants from Ghana, but she and her brother were raised by their single mother for most of their childhood after their father abandoned the family and returned to Ghana.
Gifty’s brother grew tall and became a gifted athlete and was a star high school basketball player. But that came to an abrupt end after he acquired a opioid habit and eventually died of a heroin overdose. Consequently, Gifty’s mother fell into a depression so severe that 11-year-old Gifty was sent to Ghana for a time to live with her aunt.
This background partly explains why Gifty’s selected field of scientific research is seeking the physiological switch that causes “issues with reward seeking like the depression, where there is too much restraint in seeking pleasure, or drug addiction, where there is not enough.” Gifty’s academic success has placed her in a world of science that gives little thought to issues related to God and religion which is the extreme opposite from Gifty’s childhood community in Alabama. As a youth Gifty has experienced a spiritual “saved” experience in the Pentecostal church her family attended, and she continues to be on speaking terms with the church pastor from those years. Meanwhile her mother who has recently moved into Gifty’s California apartment has sunk into a second episode of depression and continues to resist psychiatric services prompted partly by her religious beliefs.
The following are a listing of the “contrasting life values, characteristics, and situations” referenced in the first sentence of this review. These are the issues I identified in the story, but there’s more than one way to pair these things up. Others can probably identify some that I missed.
Academically Gifted—Negative Black Stereotypes
African Immigrant — White Privilege
Atheist — Fundamentalist Christian
Biblical Literalism — Liberal Christianity
Depression — Drug High
Facts — Faith
Freewill — Neurological Programming
Ghanaian — American
Human Soul — Human Brain
Isolated/Alone — Family/Community
Saved (spiritually) — Sexual Experience
Science — Religion
Self Control — Addiction
Spirit Moved — Control Freak
Wanted Son — Unwanted Daughter
The book’s narration provides an insightful exploration of life’s dilemmas in language that will provide a fresh perspective for many readers. It's a reminder of the variety of ways people can live a life with meaning. Throughout Transcendent Kingdom, the author Gyasi tackles a complex web of themes while moving slowly toward something of a conclusion.
It’s interesting to note that her neurological experiments have found a way to intervene in the lives of her test mice to stop addictive behavior. This is obviously a needed intervention for many people, and in Gifty’s case could have saved her brother’s life. A similar sort of neurological intervention could perhaps cure clinical depression. The nonfiction basis for the referenced neurological experiments is contained in this (view spoiler).
The book does not say how easily this neurological intervention could be transferred to humans, but it reminded me of the book, Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening , by John Elder Robison. Robison describes how his autistic spectrum characteristics were temporarily ended with the application of magnetic waves to a portion of his brain.
For a conclusion this book's story hops over a couple undescribed years during which all unanswered questions have apparently been resolved, ignored, or perhaps simply left unexplained. It leaves the reader with a happy feeling, but doesn’t exactly answer all life’s questions that have been raised in the book.
It's interesting to note that the author is Ghanaian-American, grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and has an undergraduate degree from Stanford. She has obviously constructed this fictional story around the basic outline of her own life.