Play Audiobook Sample
Let Us Descend: A Novel Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(0.00) - 0 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
From the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow comes a haunting masterpiece about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.
“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’” —Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery. 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 listener’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.
While Ward leads one through the descent, this is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
This miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.
Download and start listening now!
“Pitting ancestral wisdom and human connection against the arbitrary brutality of slavery, this book will have readers torn between wanting to savor the richness of every sentence and needing to know, immediately, what happens next.”
— Oprah Daily
Quotes
-
“Ward does a fine job of holding the listener’s attention…The horror of Annis’s experiences is made bearable because of Ward’s understated strength.”
— AudioFile -
"Annis’s story, told in Ward’s musical prose, is nothing short of epic, magical, and intensely moving."
— Vogue -
“Combining magical realism with historical fiction…[a] heart-wrenching narrative of the American South in the age of slavery.”
— Time
Awards
-
An October 2023 LibraryReads Pick
-
An Oprah’s Book Club Selection
-
A Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year
-
An #1 Amazon bestseller
-
A New York Times bestseller
-
A BookPage Top Pick of the Month
-
Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
-
An Amazon.com Best Book of the Year
-
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
-
A New Yorker Best Book of 2023
-
A Vanity Fair Best Books of the Year Pick
-
A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year
Let Us Descend Listener Reviews
Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
About Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward received her MFA degree from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones. She is also the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is a professor of creative writing at Tulane University.