Details
Synopsis
The unusual main characters in this debut novel are a family of freed black slaves who hold slaves themselves. As the novel tells the stories of former slave Henry Townsend, his wife Caldonia, a man who hunts runaways for a living, and the various slaves on Henry's Virginia farm, a picture emerges of pre-Civil War America and the complexities of race, responsibility, and the institution of slavery. As the author stated in a Publishers Weekly interview: "I was trying to find out how these people survived in these horrifying conditions....I want to write about the things that helped us to survive: the love, grace, intelligence and strength of us as a people."
| Size | | Length: | 388 pages | | Height: | 5.5 in | | Width: | 8.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 18.4 oz |
Industry Reviews
"Jones has written a book of tremendous moral intricacy: no relationship here is left unaltered by the bonds of ownership, and liberty eludes most of Manchester County's residents, not just its slaves."
New Yorker (09/01/2003)
"An author who writes about slavery without preaching to his readers or standing in judgment over his characters is rare, and with that restraint and broad imagination Edward P. Jones has produced an extraordinary piece of American fiction."
Times Literary Supplement - Jonathan Fasman (10/10/2003)
"[A]n impressively researched, challenging novel debut....The particulars and consequences of the 'right' of humans to own other humans are dramatized with unprecedented ingenuity and intensity, in a harrowing tale that scarcely ever raises its voice....This will mean a great deal to a great many people. It should be a major prize contender, and it won't be forgotten."
Kirkus (07/15/2003)
"[Jones] write[s] about history not as if it were over and done with, but as if anything could happen in the chaos of the moment....Jones writes with a sense of narrative foreboding undercut by the erratic nature of events, and the result is a portrait of a society that is seemingly immutable but...tentative and fragile....THE KNOWN WORLD is an achievement of epic scope and architectural construction, which nonetheless reads like a string of folk tales...--tales told by a conjurer who distracts you so well that you never know what hit you."
New York Times Book Review - John Vernon (08/31/2003)
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