The notable historical events that often marked the passage of time from chapter to chapter offered another constraint, so while the book as a whole was sweeping, the chapters were narrow in scope. Homegoing, structurally speaking, was quite tight-14 chapters, each set in a new time period with a new point-of-view character. Yaa Gyasi: I had hoped to find the writing process for my second novel easier, but instead I encountered new challenges. Can you describe the changes in the writing process that emerged while working with a narrower lens? “When My Mother Came to Stay” is a more intimate story concerning the relationship between a mother and daughter. Oliver Munday: Your debut novel, Homegoing, is a work of breathtaking sweep, spanning eight generations and two continents. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. To mark the excerpt’s publication in The Atlantic, Gyasi and Oliver Munday, a senior art director of the magazine, discussed it over email. “When My Mother Came to Stay” is taken from Yaa Gyasi’s forthcoming novel, Transcendent Kingdom(available on September 1). Transcendent Kingdom is a searing story story of love, loss and redemption, and the myriad ways we try to rebuild our lives from the rubble of our collective pasts.Editor’s Note: Read Yaa Gyasi’s new fiction, “When My Mother Came to Stay.” Tracing her family's story through continents and generations will take her deep into the dark heart of modern America. But when her mother comes to stay, Gifty soon learns that the roots of their tangled traumas reach farther than she ever thought. Years later, desperate to understand the opioid addiction that destroyed her brother's life, she turns to science for answers. When her father and brother succumb to the hard reality of immigrant life in the American South, their family of four becomes two - and the life Gifty dreamed of slips away. Transcendent Kingdom: Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 Yaa Gyasi € 24.99 If not in stock, the expected delivery time to our store for this item will be 3-5 working days.Īs a child Gifty would ask her parents to tell the story of their journey from Ghana to Alabama, seeking escape in myths of heroism and romance.

The transcendent kingdom