THE KNOWN WORLD : A Novel

New York, NY: Amistad/HarperCollins Publishers, 2004. First Edition, First Printing . Paperback. COLLECTIBLE - NEW/None as Issued. BRAND NEW Copy; First Edition, First Printing. Softcover/Fine. Outstanding, deeply humanistic, historical novel from African-American novelist Edward Paul Jones (1950 -), well worthy winner of the Pulitzer (2004) and the International Dublin Literary Award (2005). Set in Virginia, 20 years before the Civil War. Life story of mixed-race Henry Townsend supported by a cast of equally complex characters who crossed his path. A skilled farmer & boot maker, and a former slave whose freedom was procured by his parents, bought himself a slave the moment he had the funds. Disciplined in character, pragmatic and not a social-rebel, with support from powerful local mentor, Williams Robinson, he buys his own plantation sustained by slaves whom he kept at a distance since they were but socially sactified "human property". On his death, however, sociial values had evolved again. His widow Caldonia inherits slaves anticipating emancipation. The slaves are not without inner discord; some take to escaping under the cover of night, and others were still in acceptance of bondage --- they betray one another. Meanwhile low-paid white patrollers watch as "white slave speculators" sell kidnapped free black people back into slavery as news/rumors of slave rebellions set white families on edge. A powerful, multi-dimensional analitical work on the discord faced by human beings when as social institutions collapse. Townsend was an honorable being, a fair & gentle master by the standards of his time, but did perpetuate an unsustainable, socially unjust system denied his wife, not without repercusiions to modern times.