Homegoing is an epic which tracks two branches of an extended family through centuries of history in Ghana and the US. One half of the family descends from a daughter who marries a British naval captain charged with overseeing the slave trade in precolonial days. The other descends from a daughter who is captured during an Asante raid on her village and sold into slavery, unbeknownst, by that same captain. From there we explore the trials and tribulations of each generation of both sides of the family as they suffer through slavery, colonialism, war, and simple human cruelty. For all that, this is a book thick with magical writing, and a transcendent perspective that almost allows us to zoom out from all of these horrors, without losing track of the suffering involved. It’s an extraordinary feat of creative historical writing.

I quite enjoyed the book, for a number of reasons. To begin with, it’s quite a unique work, juxtaposing the histories of two countries which are not often told together. By itself that makes it eye-opening, giving the reader a glimpse into the history of millions of people. As a literary work, it takes a tone that is not quite magical, but close. The contrasting themes of fire and water, the small miracles that are only just believable, the long-lost talisman, the coincidental occurrences that repeat across the generations and on both sides of the family tree - these sum up to a positively ethereal story. That said: the writing can be quite disorienting at times, especially in the first few chapters, when it’s not yet clear what the structure of the story will be. We wander from one generation’s story to the next, from one side of the Atlantic to the other, without really allowing any one individual’s story to end. That is perhaps just the point, though, since the characters themselves experience a history which is nothing if not disorienting. Setting oneself to rights while reading the story could well be the point of the whole endeavor.

This book is a unique experience which won’t be soon forgotten, I’d certainly recommend it.