Transcendent Kingdom
Nigeria

Transcendent Kingdom

by Yaa Gyasi

Mental Health Literary Fiction 2020

Summary

Gifty, a Ghanaian American neuroscience PhD student at Stanford, searches for answers in the science of addiction while struggling to understand the tragedies that have shaped her family. Her brother Nana, once a promising athlete, died after developing an addiction to opioids, and her deeply religious mother has fallen into a debilitating depression. Torn between the evangelical faith of her childhood and the scientific world she inhabits, Gifty investigates the mechanisms of reward and suffering, hoping to uncover why people hurt themselves and those they love. Intimate and quietly devastating, Transcendent Kingdom explores grief, addiction, faith, and the limits of what science can explain about the human heart.

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Country
Nigeria
Africa
About the author
Yaa Gyasi
Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian-American novelist born in 1989 in Mampong, Ghana. She moved to the United States as a child and grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. Her experiences of navigating different cultural worlds inform her exploration of identity, history, and belonging. Gyasi studied English at Stanford University before earning a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her debut novel, Homegoing (2016), received widespread critical acclaim, winning the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award. Her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom (2020), explores faith, family, grief, and the intersection of science and spirituality through the story of a Ghanaian-American neuroscientist. Gyasi is recognized for her emotionally nuanced storytelling and her ability to connect intimate family experiences with larger historical forces.

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Details
Published
2020
Author
Yaa Gyasi