The Book of Negroes - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lawrence Hill was born in Ontario, Canada of a black father and a white mother. He is the author of a memoir, Black Berry, Sweet Juice, a work of non-fiction, The Deserter's Tale, and two other novels. His third novel, The Book of Negroes (published in the US as Somebody Knows My Name) was a no.1 bestseller in Canada, and won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book.

Aus dem Klappentext

Abducted from her village in Mali at the age of eleven in 1755, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom - and of finding her way home again. After a brutal journey on a slave ship, she is sold to a plantation owner in the American South, where, in spite of abject abuse and repression, she learns to read and write.

Some years later, torn from her husband and child, she finds herself in Manhattan in the chaos of the Revolutionary War on the side of the British, and helps pen The Book of Negroes. This book (an actual document held in the National Archives at Kew) is a list of freed blacks rewarded for service to the king with safe passage to Nova Scotia. But when Aminata reaches the promised haven, she finds a life of even more hardship, stinging prejudice and loss. Eventually, she joins a group of freed slaves on a harrowing return odyssey to Africa. After six decades, she ends her epic journey in London, a living icon for Wilberforce's abolitionist cause.

The Book of Negroes is a captivating historical narrative that brings to life a dark and shameful chapter in our history through the story of one brave and resourceful woman.