Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced on Friday that the new novel “Let Us Descend” by Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner, will be released on October 3rd. This novel tells the story of an enslaved teenage girl, blending elements of magical realism, historical narrative, and Dante’s “Inferno”.
This is Ward’s first novel since “Sing, Unburied, Sing”, which won the National Book Award in 2017, and her first work of fiction set in the distant past. Ward, who is the only Black author to have won two National Book Awards for fiction, has gained acclaim for her powerful lyricism and unique perspective.
In a statement, Ward said that her goal with her new book “Let Us Descend” was to delve into the hard truths of the protagonist Annis’s experiences as an enslaved person, and to convey the lack of physical agency that she had over her own body. She also wanted readers to feel empathy for Annis and to understand her experience as vividly as possible. Ward went on to say that it took her years and multiple drafts to understand how Annis and other enslaved people were able to maintain their sense of self and hope in such a brutal and dehumanizing environment.
She added that it was important to her to not only depict the harshness and terror of Annis’s days, but also to acknowledge her resilience, her tenderness, her imagination, and her belief in herself, which she held onto even in the darkest moments.
Ward, a Mississippi native and author of several novels set in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, has won National Book Awards for her two most recent books “Salvage the Bones” and “Sing, Unburied, Sing”, which respectively explore the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the struggles of a Mississippi family.
She is also the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant and in 2022, became the youngest recipient of the Library of Congress’s Prize for American Fiction, a lifetime achievement award. Ward’s other notable works include the novel “Where the Line Bleeds” and the memoir “Men We Reaped”, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Prize in 2014. Currently, she teaches at Tulane University.
