
The Door of No Return
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Narrated by:
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Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
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By:
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Kwame Alexander
About this listen
From the Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award winning author Kwame Alexander, comes the first book in a searing, breathtaking trilogy that tells the story of a boy, a village, and the epic odyssey of an African family.
In his village in Upper Kwanta, 11-year-old Kofi loves his family, playing oware with his grandfather and swimming in the river Offin. He’s warned though, to never go to the river at night. His brother tells him ”There are things about the water you do not know. “ Like what? Kofi asks. “The beasts.” His brother answers.
One fateful night, the unthinkable happens and in a flash, Kofi’s world turns upside down. Kofi soon ends up in a fight for his life and what happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.
This spellbinding novel by the author of The Crossover and Booked will take you on an unforgettable adventure that will open your eyes and break your heart.
The Door of No Return is an excellent choice for independent reading, sharing in the classroom, book groups, and homeschooling.
An instant #1 New York Times Bestseller!
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2022 Kwame Alexander (P)2022 Little, Brown Young ReadersListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Absolutely spellbinding: Kwame Alexander weaves together storytelling, poetry, music and history like no one else can. An unforgettable journey to be treasured and shared across generations.” (Rick Riordan, New York Times best-selling author of the Percy Jackson series)
“Kwame Alexander's story, The Door of No Return, humanizes the experience of the people who knew the flavors of freedom long before they knew the sting of slavery. Alexander lures you in and endears you to Kofi and his world in a way that has you fully invested in time and place. Alexander seems to trust the heaviness of history to hold its own, and so he is able to tell a story with such a lightness of foot which only further emphasizes that weight of history that is undeniable and irrevocable. His writing is at once vivid and simple, lyrical and surgical, expressive and exacting, comforting and cutting. It hypnotizes and sobers, hypnotizes and sobers, in a rhythm as timeless as the talking drum that carries the tales of his people: Kum-PUM PUM! Kum-PUM PUM! I wish this book existed alongside Huckleberry Finn when I was in school. I am glad it exists now!” (Lupita Nyong’o, Actress and Author)
"Alexander turns the nightmare of the past into an epic story for all times and all people. The Door of No Return is a breathtaking, heartbreaking triumph and an instant classic." (Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians)
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Story
In a powerfully intimate and non-traditional (or "new-fashioned") memoir, Kwame Alexander shares snapshots of a man learning how to love. He takes us through stories of his parents: from being awkward newlyweds in the sticky Chicago summer of 1967, to the sometimes-confusing ways they showed their love to each other, and for him. He explores his own relationships—his difficulties as a newly wedded, 22-year-old father, and the precariousness of his early marriage working in a jazz club with his second wife.
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Loved it.
- By Tonja on 06-01-23
By: Kwame Alexander
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When Stars Are Scattered
- By: Victoria Jamieson, Omar Mohamed
- Narrated by: full cast, Dominic Hoffman, Christine Avila, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar knows his nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future...but it would also mean leaving his brother, the only family member he has left, every day.
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Informative . Very interesting !
- By vanessa nance on 04-01-22
By: Victoria Jamieson, and others
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The Bitter Side of Sweet
- By: Tara Sullivan
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifteen-year-old Amadou counts the things that matter. For two years what has mattered are the number of cacao pods he and his younger brother, Seydou, can chop down in a day. This number is very important. The higher the number, the safer they are, because the bosses won't beat them. The higher the number, the closer they are to paying off their debt and returning home to Moke and Auntie. Maybe. The problem is, Amadou doesn't know how much he and Seydou owe, and the bosses won't tell him.
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Sweetness and bitterness...
- By Daryl on 04-21-16
By: Tara Sullivan
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Solimar
- The Sword of Monarchs
- By: Pam Muñoz Ryan
- Narrated by: Franchesca Agramonte
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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On the brink of her Quinceañera, and her official coronation, Solimar visits the oyamel forest to sit among the monarch butterflies. There, the sun pierces through a sword-shaped crevice in a boulder, which shines on her and sends the butterflies humming and swirling around her. After the magical frenzy, she realizes she's been given a gift — and a burden: She can predict the near future!
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Not a great experience
- By Heidi on 12-09-22
By: Pam Muñoz Ryan
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Louder than Hunger
- By: John Schu
- Narrated by: Jeff Ebner, John Schu
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears?
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A raw and powerful story of how a young man overcame disordered eating.
- By Jessi Shiflet on 03-21-24
By: John Schu
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Blue Remembered Earth
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 21 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Critically acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds holds a well-deserved place “among the leaders of the hard-science space opera renaissance." ( Publishers Weekly). In Blue Remembered Earth, Geoffrey Akinya wants nothing more than to study the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But when his space-explorer grandmother dies, secrets come to light and Geoffrey is dispatched to the Moon to protect the family name - and prevent an impending catastrophe.
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A surprising and staisfying departure for Reynolds
- By Michael G Kurilla on 07-21-12
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Across So Many Seas
- By: Ruth Behar
- Narrated by: Allison Strong, Victoria Villarreal, Sol Madariaga, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Spanning over 500 years, Pura Belpré Award winner Ruth Behar's epic novel tells the stories of four girls from different generations of a Jewish family, many of them forced to leave their country and start a new life.
By: Ruth Behar
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House Arrest
- By: K.A. Holt
- Narrated by: Alex Kydd
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Timothy is on probation. It's a strange word - something that happens to other kids, to delinquents, not to kids like him. And yet, he is under house arrest for the next year. He must check in weekly with a probation officer and a therapist and keep a journal for an entire year. And mostly, he has to stay out of trouble. But when he must take drastic measures to help his struggling family, staying out of trouble proves more difficult than Timothy ever thought it would be.
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Better off reading yourself
- By Patricia Rosenberg on 02-14-23
By: K.A. Holt
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The Old Drift
- A Novel
- By: Namwali Serpell
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Richard E. Grant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 24 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
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A saga of Africa and African immigrants
- By Books on our Brains Society/ Barbara on 08-02-19
By: Namwali Serpell
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The Sleepless
- By: Jen Williams
- Narrated by: Esme Lonsdale, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Elver is the guardian of the wild and dangerous monster forest. Saved from the brink of death by a god, her skin will poison anyone she touches. Artair is on a mission—one that takes him face-to-face with Elver at her most ruthless. But her defenses are useless when she discovers he's the only human impervious to her deadly gift. For Artair isn't human: he's one of the Sleepless, cursed to share his body with an evil spirit.
By: Jen Williams
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One Crazy Summer
- By: Rita Williams-Garcia
- Narrated by: Sisi Aisha Johnson
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Eleven-year-old Delphine and her younger sisters Vonetta and Fern travel to Oakland to meet their mother, Cecil, who abandoned their family years earlier. But even when Cecil gets them to her house, she shows no interest and seems to view them as nothing but a nuisance.
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Great family road trip book!
- By Iris J. Scott Love on 03-16-16
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The Memory of Love
- By: Aminatta Forna
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the aftermath of Sierra Leone’s 1990s civil war, British psychologist Adrian Lockheart comes to work at the Freetown hospital. There he meets a dying elderly patient who confesses to Adrian his past crimes of passion and betrayal.
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Narrator is great - Could not get into the story.
- By Delah on 02-10-12
By: Aminatta Forna
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Mid-Air
- By: Alicia D. Williams
- Narrated by: Landon Woodson
- Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s the last few months of eighth grade, and Isaiah feels lost. He thought his summer was going to be him and his boys Drew and Darius, hanging out, doing wheelies, watching martial arts movies, and breaking tons of Guinness World Records before high school. But now, more and more, Drew seems to be fading from their friendship, and though he won’t admit it, Isaiah knows exactly why. Because Darius is…gone.
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The Shape of Thunder
- By: Jasmine Warga
- Narrated by: Reena Dutt, Jennifer Jill Araya
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Cora hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Quinn, in a year. Despite living next door to each other, they exist in separate worlds of grief. Cora is still grappling with the death of her beloved sister in a school shooting, and Quinn is carrying the guilt of what her brother did. On the day of Cora’s 12th birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep with a note. She has decided that the only way to fix things is to go back in time to the moment before her brother changed all their lives forever - and stop him.
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Best for younger MG readers
- By Pink Amy on 01-04-24
By: Jasmine Warga
What listeners say about The Door of No Return
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Yolonda Simon
- 12-09-22
One of Kwame’s Best!
I loved this book! It was not at all what I expected, but certainly exceeded my expectations.
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- Elizabeth C Jilka
- 03-13-23
Powerful and heart wrenching
It took me a minute to get into it at first, but once I was in, I was hooked. Kwame Alexander is an amazing storyteller. I have an almost 11 year old son, so to hear this from an 11 year old boy’s perspective was both beautiful and heartbreaking. The narration was outstanding and frankly wowed me. The voices were so distinct and different. Well done, all around. Highly recommend.
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- Maulana
- 03-28-25
The ending. It felt like Hope!
Beautiful reflection of the past. His articulation of the world of the past was clear and refreshing.
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- Paid forward
- 10-07-22
I love The Ending!
It read like poetry! The words flowed and the Reader sounded quite authentic. I was pleasantly surprised by the uplifting ending, since this period of time leaves very little to smile about. Making associations with other publications about the power of African people like The People Could Fly and familiar stories like Anansi pulled the young readers in and made the story that much more believable! It was a delightful yet Enlightening piece of historical fiction, most worthy of recommendation.
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- KBS
- 04-02-23
Powerful and Quotable
This book was so powerful, I will be purchasing a hard copy of it. I want to see all these beautiful words on the page. A novel-in-prose, the audiobook is performed exquisitely. The music, language, energy, symbolism, and narrative structure are artfully done. We need more stories like this. Thank you, Kwame Alexander. (I believe this is the first of a trilogy, in which case I cannot wait for the 2nd and 3rd tomes.)
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- LovePeace
- 12-31-22
Amazing!
This story was tragically beautiful. It took on new meaning for me as I tracked to Akra, Ghana this summer and visited the castles. I will never be the same. I will be better! Ase
The narrator was phenomenal!!
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- MDG
- 02-11-23
Excellence All Around
No only will the words be classic, so too will the performance! This is surely a must listen!
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- Anonymous User
- 03-03-24
Beautiful and heartbreaking
I loved seeing the world of Kofi through his eyes. It is only learning of through richness of his life can I process all he lost.
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- Kimberly
- 01-18-23
Powerful
Beautiful sharing of heartbreaking story of incredible words to share a powerful perspective too often ignored and/or silenced.
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- DH Fuller
- 01-19-23
Another one!
This is another great work by Kwame Alexander. He seems to get more creative and bolder with each new venture into the taboo topics he challenges his readers to face.
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