Let Us Descend

Jesmyn Ward

From award-winning author Jesmyn Ward, a haunting masterpiece about an enslaved girl in the years before the civil war

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take.

Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, Let Us Descend is a masterwork for the ages.

22 August 2023

HARDBACK / 9781526662460 / £16.99

EXPORT TPB / 9781526662453 / £13.99

EBOOK / 9781526662446 / £11.89

TERRITORY: Commonwealth (excluding Canada)/UK/Open Market

TRANSLATION RIGHTS:

ANZ Pub Date 01 August 2023

TRADE PAPERBACK / AUS $32.99 / NZ $36.99

24 October 2023

HARDBACK / 9781526665218 / £14.99

EXPORT TPB / 9781526665201 / £13.99

EBOOK / 9781526665195 / £10.49

TERRITORY: Commonwealth (excluding Canada)/Europe/Open Market

TRANSLATION RIGHTS:

ANZ Pub Date 31 October 2023

TRADE PAPERBACK / AUS

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant among other honours. She is the winner of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.

24 October 2023

HARDBACK / 9781526666710 / £16.99

EXPORT TPB / 9781526666727 / £13.99

EBOOK / 9781526666734 / £11.89

TERRITORY: Commonwealth (excluding Canada)/UK/Open Market

TRANSLATION RIGHTS:

ANZ Pub Date 24 October 2023

TRADE PAPERBACK / AUS $34.99 / NZ $38.99