Homegoing

Homegoing opens in what is now Ghana with two half-sisters who share a mother but grow up in different villages, unaware of each other. Effia, admired for her beauty, is married to James Collins, the British governor of Cape Coast Castle, and lives in its upper rooms. Esi is captured in a raid and held in the women's dungeon below, before being sent across the ocean.

From there the novel moves forward one generation at a time, and each chapter is a portrait of a single descendant. Effia's line stays on the Gold Coast, living through wars between rival peoples, the trade with the British and the long years of colonial rule. Esi's line lives through plantation slavery in the American South, forced labor in Alabama's coal mines, the move north and life in Harlem. A black stone handed down in the family links the threads, and the final chapters bring two young people from either branch to the coast where the story began.

Moving, clear and never confusing, thanks to a family tree at the front. About 320 pages, and a debut that Gyasi published in her twenties.