Beloved

At the center of Toni Morrison's fifth novel, which earned her the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is an almost unspeakable act of horror and heroism: a woman brutally kills her infant daughter rather than allow her to be enslaved. The woman is Sethe, and the novel traces her journey from slavery to freedom during and immediately following the Civil War. Woven into this circular, mesmerizing narrative are the horrible truths of Sethe's past: the incredible cruelties she endured as a slave, and the hardships she suffered in her journey north to freedom. Just as Sethe finds the past too painful to remember, and the future just "a matter of keeping the past at bay," her story is almost too painful to read. Yet Morrison manages to imbue the wreckage of her characters' lives with compassion, humanity, and humor. Part ghost story, part history lesson, part folk tale, Beloved finds beauty in the unbearable, and lets us all see the enduring promise of hope that lies in anyone's future.

"Another triumph....Ms. Morrison's versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds....If you can believe page one — and Ms. Morrison's verbal authority compels belief — you're hooked on the rest of the book." Margaret Atwood, New York Times Book Review

"Powerful is too tame a word to describe Toni Morrison's searing new novel of post-Civil War Ohio. Morrison, whose myth-laden storytelling shone in Song of Solomon and other novels, has created an unforgettable world in this novel about ex-slaves haunted by violent memories....A fascinating, grim, relentless story, this important book by a major writer belongs in most libraries." Library Journal

"A work that brings to the darkest corners of American experience the wisdom, and the courage, to know them as they are." New York Review of Books

"Brilliant....Resonates from past to present." San Francisco Chronicle

"A work of genuine force....Beautifully written." The Washington Post

"Dazzling....Magical....An extraordinary work." The New York Times

"Compelling....Morrison shakes that brilliant kaleidoscope of hers again, and the story of pain, endurance, poetry and power she is born to tell comes right out." The Village Voice

Toni Morrison was born in Ohio and is a graduate of Howard University and Cornell University. She has worked in publishing and taught at various colleges and universities, including Yale, Rutgers, and SUNY Albany as the Schweitzer Chair. She is currently Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton. She was the recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature.