Novelist Amy Tan recounts that as she was writing her second book, she prayed to unnamed goddess that she “be able to write the best book I could, and that no matter what happened to it, I would have no regrets.” Wisely, she didn’t pray for a particular outcome or some metric of success; she prayed that she would feel no regrets.

We talk to writer Yaa Gyasi about her compelling bestselling novel “Transcendent Kingdom.”