Another book I read was One Hundred Years of Solitude (Harper Perennial) by Gabriel García Márquez. Those Victorian novels give you the idea that you can have something with as much depth and breadth as imaginable. Three years later the structure started to materialize and I realized that what I really wanted was to look at a long stretch of time more closely. I wanted to focus on the first two characters, who are from the eighteenth century, and then on the last two, who are present-day. It opened up my imagination and became the genesis of this story. A friend visited me and on a whim we went to the Cape Coast Castle. I went to Ghana between my sophomore and junior year.

YAA GYASI: I came up with the idea in 2009, when I had a research grant from Stanford University. Is that what you had in mind when you set out to write it? It is like those big Victorian novels or Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (Vintage). Here, the author gives us the details behind one of the “event” books of the year.ĮSSENCE: Homegoing is historical and multigenerational, and it spans two continents.

At just 27 years old, the Ghanaian native has delivered Homegoing (Knopf, $26.95), her debut novel, and everyone from Ta-Nehisi Coates to the literati is raving about it.

Homecoming gyasi