As 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. But when her father and brother succumb to the hard reality of life in America, their family of four becomes two. While her mother finds solace in religion, Gifty will look to science in an attempt to understand the addiction that destroyed her brother. But she will soon realize that the roots of their tangled traumas reach further back than she could have ever imagined.

‘Perhaps neither science nor religion cold capture transcendence, but Gyasi has proved, once again, that a novel can’