
Masterful Pulitzer-prize winning literary epic about the painful & complex realities of slave life on a Southern plantation An utterly original exploration of race trust & the cruel truths of human nature this is a landmark in modern American literature Henry Townsend a black farmer boot maker & former slave becomes proprietor of his own plantation
- as well as his own slaves When he dies his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief & things begin to fall apart slaves take to escaping under the cover of night & families who had once found love beneath the weight of slavery begin to betray one another Beyond the Townsend household the known world also unravels low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave speculators' sell free black people into slavery & rumours of slave rebellions set white families against slaves who have served them for years An ambitious luminously written novel that ranges from the past to the present The Known World seamlessly weaves together the lives of the freed & the enslaved
- & allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multi-dimensional world created by the institution of slavery