Washington Black: A Novel
Written by Esi Edugyan
Narrated by Dion Graham
4.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
From the author of the award-winning international best seller Half-Blood Blues comes a dazzling new novel, about a boy who rises from the ashes of slavery to become a free man of the world.
George Washington Black, or "Wash," an eleven-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is terrified to be chosen by his master's brother as his manservant. To his surprise, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning—and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Christopher and Wash must abandon everything. What follows is their flight along the eastern coast of America, and, finally, to a remote outpost in the Arctic. What brings Christopher and Wash together will tear them apart, propelling Wash even further across the globe in search of his true self. From the blistering cane fields of the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, from the earliest aquariums of London to the eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black tells a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, of a world destroyed and made whole again, and asks the question, What is true freedom?
Esi Edugyan
A graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Victoria, ESI EDUGYAN was raised in Calgary, Alberta. She is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of Washington Black, which was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Man Booker Award and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Half-Blood Blues, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Man Booker Prize and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize; and The Second Life of Samuel Tyne. She is also the author of Dreaming of Elsewhere, which is part of the Kreisel Memorial Lecture Series. She has held fellowships in the U.S., Scotland, Iceland, Germany, Hungary, Finland, Spain, and Belgium. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
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Reviews for Washington Black
64 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastic characters. Beautiful language. Well worth the read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Superbly written adventure through time and space. This is a book to be read, discussed & re-read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Such an amazing book. One of the best audiobooks i have ever heard as far as production and voice acting, and one of the best stories I have ever been sucked into. You are immediately thrown into the life of slave in the early 1800s on a sugar plantation. The brutality of that world as told through the eyes of a child who had never known any other life or that any other type of life could even exist. The characters so throughly developed, even the minor ones we only know for a few pages or chapters. It’s a thrilling story that walks such a fine line between obvious fiction and a possible biography. Highly recommend.
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