The Door of No Return
Age 12+
Historical Fiction Poetry Family & Home Stories
From New York Times best-selling author Kwame Alexander comes the first book in a breathtaking trilogy that tells the story of a boy and his epic odyssey across land and sea to a new world.
The #1 New York Times bestseller
Dreams are today’s answers for tomorrow’s questions.
Eleven-year-old Kofi Offin has dreams of water, of its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets. He has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, where he lives. He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father’s father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. But when the unthinkable – a sudden death – occurs during a festival between rival villages, Kofi ends up in a fight for his life. What happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves. Yet Kofi’s dreams may be the key to his freedom…
Reviews
At once vivid and simple, lyrical and surgical, expressive and exacting, comforting and cutting.
Absolutely spellbinding: Kwame Alexander weaves together storytelling, poetry, music and history like no one else can. An unforgettable journey to be treasured and shared across generations.
Interweaving moments of joyful exuberance and heartbreaking sadness via sensate lines by turns sweet and stinging, Alexander’s sweeping novel conjures a captivating, resonant world of African tradition, life, and ancestral wisdom.
Publishers Weekly
Alexander’s rich language is lyrical and haunting as the water, long a source of comfort for Kofi, becomes full of uncertainty and danger. A riveting, not-to-be-missed trilogy opener that will leave readers invested in what is to come.
Kirkus
