Dèy by Edwidge Danticat.jpg
Dèy by Edwidge Danticat.jpg

Dèy by Edwidge Danticat

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Hardcover:

From the bestselling author of Everything Inside comes a vivid, timely story, moving from Haiti to Brooklyn to Miami, of a woman whose sense of self and family are called into question when she gets caught in a random act of violence one sunny Florida day.

"Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?" These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. When she hears gunfire while at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a nearby restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Once she's safely home, Magnolia keeps this traumatic event from everyone. But given her life back, she begins to see everything clearly: her extraordinary bond with her daughter, Zoë; her nearly broken relationship with Zoë's father; the challenges of her mentally troubled mother, whose unraveling patterns Magnolia worries she's spiraling toward herself; and her father's affair with a woman who has borne him a child. While struggling through the labyrinth of her past, Magnolia must also come to terms with the losses sustained that life-altering day, and nearly every day by her parents and sibling in Haiti.

Can love or family protect us from harm? Does optimism or fear win out in one's heart? Which side will prevail for Magnolia? Pulled between these questions, each of which involves a high-stakes choice—Miami or Haiti, single or married, mortal or ghost, before or after—Magnolia is a narrator who is "yon pati koukouy, part firefly": flitting and shimmering between different worlds.

Taking as its title a Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning, Dèy is a profoundly warm and moving novel about the importance not only of sharing grief but also of inseverable family ties. Brave and striking, Dèy is one of Danticat's most powerful and deeply affecting works yet, told with her signature "unfaltering voice and evocative beauty" (The Boston Globe).

From the bestselling author of Everything Inside comes a vivid, timely story, moving from Haiti to Brooklyn to Miami, of a woman whose sense of self and family are called into question when she gets caught in a random act of violence one sunny Florida day.

"Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?" These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. When she hears gunfire while at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a nearby restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Once she's safely home, Magnolia keeps this traumatic event from everyone. But given her life back, she begins to see everything clearly: her extraordinary bond with her daughter, Zoë; her nearly broken relationship with Zoë's father; the challenges of her mentally troubled mother, whose unraveling patterns Magnolia worries she's spiraling toward herself; and her father's affair with a woman who has borne him a child. While struggling through the labyrinth of her past, Magnolia must also come to terms with the losses sustained that life-altering day, and nearly every day by her parents and sibling in Haiti.

Can love or family protect us from harm? Does optimism or fear win out in one's heart? Which side will prevail for Magnolia? Pulled between these questions, each of which involves a high-stakes choice—Miami or Haiti, single or married, mortal or ghost, before or after—Magnolia is a narrator who is "yon pati koukouy, part firefly": flitting and shimmering between different worlds.

Taking as its title a Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning, Dèy is a profoundly warm and moving novel about the importance not only of sharing grief but also of inseverable family ties. Brave and striking, Dèy is one of Danticat's most powerful and deeply affecting works yet, told with her signature "unfaltering voice and evocative beauty" (The Boston Globe).

  • Publisher: Knopf

    Title: Dèy: A Novel

    Author: Edwidge Danticat

    On Sale Date: August 25, 2026

    ISBN 13: 9780593803523

    ISBN 10: 0593803523

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $30.00

    Page Count: 256 pages

    Dimensions: 5.71 x 0.99 x 8.52 inches

    Weight: 14.4 ounces

  • Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti in 1969 and came to the United States at twelve, going on to graduate from Barnard College and earn an M.F.A. from Brown University. Her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was followed by the story collection Krik? Krak!, whose National Book Award nomination made her the youngest nominee in the prize's history. She has since written The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, Claire of the Sea Light, and the memoir Brother, I'm Dying, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; her story collection Everything Inside later earned her that award a second time, in fiction. A MacArthur Fellow and winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Danticat is one of contemporary fiction's most decorated chroniclers of the Haitian diaspora. Dèy is her first novel in more than ten years.

  • Critics and fellow bestselling authors are calling it searching, delicate, and powerful:

    • "A searching work from one of our most gifted and consistent writers." —The Boston Globe

    • "This delicate and wonderful novel draws beauty from heartache." —Publishers Weekly

    • "A powerful study of motherhood, nationhood, and violence." —Kirkus Reviews

    • "Danticat's sentences are amazing." —The New Yorker

This book is for you if

  • You want a literary novel about a woman who survives a mass shooting at a Miami mall and quietly keeps it secret from everyone she loves.

  • You're drawn to stories that move between Miami, Brooklyn, and Haiti to trace one family's shifting idea of home.

  • You like close, character-driven fiction about a mother reckoning with her own guardedness while watching her mother's mind unravel.

  • You appreciate novels that fold Haitian Kreyòl language and Little Haiti culture directly into the storytelling, untranslated.

  • You've read Edwidge Danticat before and have been waiting for her first novel in more than a decade.

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