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Dèy

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What to expect

'Danticat has emerged as an essential American voice in the vein of Toni Morrison' New York Times
'A story for our times' Financial Times

'Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?'

These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami, after she hears the terrifying sounds of gunfire while shopping for her daughter's birthday gift.

Once she's safely home, Magnolia hides the fact that she was at the mall shooting from everyone close to her. But given her life back, she begins to see it all clearly, and as if for the first time - the extraordinary bond she has with her teenage daughter, Zoë; the nearly broken relationship she has with her partner, Harrison; the ghost-haunted mind of her mentally unwell mother; her father's immense pain and his reason for seeking solace in the arms of a mistress. As Magnolia struggles through the labyrinth of her past, she must also come to terms with the losses sustained that traumatic day.

Taking as its title the Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning, Dèy celebrates the complexity of life in a brave and striking novel that is one of Danticat's most powerful and deeply affecting works yet.

Critics Review

Danticat delivers a resounding testament to the strength gained by sharing, whether in celebration, fear, grief, or family memories. This delicate and wonderful novel draws beauty from heartache.
Publisher's Weekly
[A] beautiful exploration of migration, gentrification and political instability.
NPR
A searching work from one of our most gifted and consistent writers.
The Boston Globe
Danticat's sentences are amazing.
Hannah Jocelyn, New Yorker
In graceful, gimlet-eyed prose, Edwidge Danticat stares down preconceptions of family and belonging, lending her novel propulsion and promise.
Time
Edwidge Danticat's first novel in over a decade is a pristine account of the slowly unfolding aftereffects of shock
New York Magazine
Edwidge Danticat probes the ideas of safety, home, and survival all while examining the consequences of not speaking about one's pain
Vulture
I love an author who knows how to emotionally wreck me, and few do it better than Edwidge Danticat . . . Danticat is a writer of both nuance and emotional force, and in Déy, she captures both
Chicago Review of Books
Edwidge Danticat is back (after a decade!) with this powerful narrative of trauma, family and home. I was hooked from the first page, and while the story slows down, it flows beautifully and thoughtfully. With Haitian language and diaspora woven throughout, Dèy is an evocative reflection on contemporary violence and grief
Ms. Magazine
A powerful study of motherhood, nationhood, and violence
Kirkus
Dèy is a love song and an elegy for the Haitian diaspora. It sparkles with adoration for the melodic Kreyòl language.
New York Times
Maybe the most crucial thing Edwidge has done in her career is respond to our erasure with depth, complication, and humanity . . . Because of writers like her, a younger generation of Black readers, girl readers, Caribbean readers can take it for granted that they will see themselves in the books they read - something that my generation could not.
Marlon James
Dèy is a love song and an elegy for the Haitian diaspora. It sparkles with adoration for the melodic Kreyòl language, for the celebrations that take place in Miami's Little Haiti . . . there is hope, however faint, in this tender novel
New York Times Book Review
Danticat has emerged as an essential American voice in the vein of Toni Morrison
New York Times
Poignant . . . [Danticat's] descriptions of the Haitian diaspora and their extended families back home are tenderly drawn, making for an immersive read. This is a story for our times, a powerful meditation on belonging, the immigrant experience and familial love
FT
Author Edwidge Danticat
Narrator Melinda Sewak
Duration 6 hours and 53 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529452402
Format Audiobook
Publisher Quercus
Genre Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Interior life
Availability AU, GB, IE

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