★★★★★ 5
A difficult book that must be read
This is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by William Styron (the author of Sophie’s Choice). It is based on a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, lead by Nate Turner. Turner’s capture and confession is the basis of this book.
The novel is told in a 1st person narrative and is largely the work of Styron’s imagination. While it is brilliantly written Styron does include graphic scenes of highly erotic obsessions with various white women and one of the most vivid homosexual encounters in modern literature. Probably because of these scenes Styron was savaged by many of the leading black artists of the day but the book has endured the criticism and is, in many ways, an American Classic.
Slavery is an indelible stain on the fabric of American culture. It will never be washed away. Turner is an aesthetic, a religious fanatic, a brilliant, tormented misanthropic, homicidal nihilist. His band of followers slaughters 52 men, women, and children. In retribution the white slaughter 200 blacks. Turner is captured, interrogated, and executed. Instead of inspiring a region wide uprising, he is brought down by his fellow blacks fighting alongside the plantation owners.
It is a difficult book to read but it is a book that really should be read.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2013
