From the author of the International Booker Prize-winning At Night All Blood is Black: a moving and immersive adventure story set in eighteenth century SenegalParis, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson is dying. His last word is a woman's name: Maram.But who was she?Searching for the answer, Adanson's daughter discovers a journal of his youthful travels in Senegal, which tellsa story of wild adventure and impossible desires. It reveals how he heard of a young woman sold into slavery who did the impossible and returned. How he became obsessed with finding her, whatever the cost.And how a man who longed to solve the mysteries of nature instead found himself grappling with the impulses of the heart.