Synopses & Reviews
Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for
Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief; and things begin to fall apart: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families who had once found love beneath the weight of slavery begin to betray one another. Beyond the Townsend estate, the known world also unravels: low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave "speculators" sell free black people into slavery; and rumor of slave rebellions set white families against slaves who have served them for years.
An ambitious, luminously written novel that ranges seamlessly between the past and future and back again to the present, The Known World weaves together the lives of freed and enslaved blacks, whites, and Indians, and allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional world created by the institution of slavery.
Review
"This extraordinary novel [is] the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years." Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World
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"[S]tunning....With hard-won wisdom and hugely effective understatement, Mr. Jones explores the unsettling, contradiction-prone world of a Virginia slaveholder who happens to be black." Janet Maslin, The New York Times
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"[K]aleidoscopic....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." The New Yorker
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"Jones's prose can be rather static and his phrasings ponderous, but his narrative achieves crushing momentum through sheer accumulation of detail, unusual historical insight and generous character writing." Publishers Weekly
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"[A]mbitious....A fascinating look at a painful theme, this book is an ideal choice for book clubs. Highly recommended." Library Journal
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"A profoundly beautiful and insightful look at American slavery and human nature." Booklist (starred)
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"Vivid....[An] epic novel." Book Magazine
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"An exemplar of historical fiction...[it] will subdue your preconceptions, enrich your perceptions and trouble your sleep....The way Jones tells this story...recalls Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez." Newsday
About the Author
Edward P. Jones, the New York Times bestselling author, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for The Known World; he also received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004. His first collection of stories, Lost in the City, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was short listed for the National Book Award. His second collection, All Aunt Hagars Children, was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award. He has been an instructor of fiction writing at a range of universities, including Princeton. He lives in Washington, D.C.