Washington Black PDF
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Esi Edugyan relates the astonishing adventures of Washington Black, whose escape from the brutal cane plantations of Barbados was only the beginning.
In a Barbados sugar plantation, Washington Black, an 11-year-old field slave, is selected to be the personal servant of one of the new owners - the eccentric Christopher ‘Titch’ Wilde. Titch is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor - and abolitionist. He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human; and where a boy born in chains can embrace a life of dignity and meaning. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Titch abandons everything to save him. They escape the island together, but Titch disappears and Washington must make his way alone, following his own path to freedom.
"There are moments when the writing soars, when Washington’s experience of the natural world is rendered in a prose that openly, almost exultantly, strives to evoke beauty ... His prose can be vivid, sometimes fervid, but it can also be measured ... What Edugyan has done in Washington Black is to complicate the historical narrative by focusing on one unique and self-led figure." - Colm Toibin, The New York Times Book Review
Esi Edugyan's Washington Black was shortlisted for The Scotiabank Giller Prize 2018. Her previous novel, Half Blood Blues, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was nominated for the Booker Prize, the Governor-General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize, and the Orange Prize. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
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