The next novel by Jesmyn Ward, the two-time National Book Award winner, is the story of an enslaved teenage girl that the publisher is calling a blend of magical realism, historical narrative and Dante's “Inferno.”
Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced Friday that Ward’s “Let Us Descend” will come out Oct. 3, according to AP.
It’s her first novel since “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” winner of the National Book Award in 2017, and first fictional work set in the distant past. The 45-year-old Ward, the only Black author to receive two NBAs for fiction, has been widely praised for her striking lyricism and deep, uncompromising perspective.
In a statement issued by Scribner, Ward said that she wanted to explore the “hard truth” of her new book’s protagonist, Annis, and what it meant to “have little to no physical agency over her own body.”
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