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  • Transcendent Kingdom

  • A novel
  • Written by: Yaa Gyasi
  • Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
  • Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (107 ratings)

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Transcendent Kingdom

Written by: Yaa Gyasi
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
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Publisher's Summary

New York Times Best Seller • A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick! • Finalist for the Women's Prize

Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief - a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

©2020 Yaa Gyasi (P)2020 Random House Audio
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What the critics say

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK!
FINALIST FOR WOMEN'S FICTION PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Harper’s Bazaar ● NPR ● Good Housekeeping ● Glamour ● Book Riot ● Library JournalWashington Post ● Amazon ● Marie Claire ● Kirkus Reviews ● Vanity FairEntertainment WeeklyTown and Country ● Indigo ● BBC ● USA Today ● Parade ● Real Simple ● Apartment Therapy ● Refinery29

"Gyasi sometimes reminds me of other writers who’ve addressed the immigrant experience in America—Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li in particular.... As in the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or the Ghanaian-American short-story writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the African immigrants in this novel exist at a certain remove from American racism, victims but also outsiders, marveling at the peculiar blindnesses of the locals...brilliant... Transcendent Kingdom trades the blazing brilliance of Homegoing for another type of glory, more granular and difficult to name." —Nell Freudenberger, The New York Times Book Review

What listeners say about Transcendent Kingdom

Average Customer Ratings
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Heavy but masterful

This is a hard book to engage in that it is intense, visceral and easy to relate to for many, but it's a profound and much worth it journey. Beautifully written and wonderfully narrated and absolutely soul wrenching.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

It was ok

Found the premise of science x religion interesting but the story itself was a bit dry. The way the story was read by the narrator sounded insincere. I loved the way she used accents to emphasize some characters though. Bravo on that. Otherwise, I couldn’t wait to it to be over.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

it never got better.

I struggled to finish it. Very boring read. the person reading had a nice voice.

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