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…
Creators
Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, and the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including Rebound, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, The Crossover, winner of the Newbury Medal, and The Undefeated, winner of the Caldecott Medal. Kwame is also the recipient of several other awards, including the Lee Bennett-Hopkins Poetry Award and the Coretta Scott King Arthur Honour. He is the writer and executive producer of The Crossover TV series and is the co-founder of LEAP for Ghana, an international literacy programme.
Reviews
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
At once vivid and simple, lyrical and surgical, expressive and exacting, comforting and cutting
a gripping coming-of-age-story
Guardian
An intensely powerful coming-of-age story steeped in African tradition and mythology.
Waterstones
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, starred review
