White Debt by Thomas Harding
Review by Liz Dexter As a child, I was taught that Britain had been the first nation to abolish slavery, that the effort had been led by the politician William…
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Reviewed by Annabel Having been Man Booker shortlisted in 2011 for her debut novel, Half Blood Blues, set in Berlin during WWII and fifty years later, Edugyan’s second novel, The…
Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
Reviewed by Harriet This little treasure of a book tells the story, in his own words, of the last survivor of the last, illegal, cargo of enslaved Africans to be…
Sugar Money by Jane Harris
Reviewed by Harriet Jane Harris is not exactly a prolific novelist. Five years passed beween the publication of her debut novel The Observations (2006) and her second outing Gillespie and…
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Paperback review by Lucy Unwin This is not a historical novel. Not just because the facts of slavery in pre-Civil War America are strained through the wonderful, allegorical, imagination of…