The Known World

What does it mean to enslave another human being? Sometimes a novel is the only way for me to get at the emotional heart of a horrible truth. That’s why I loved this book–an imaginary region of Virginia before the Civil War introduced me to Henry Townsend, a freed Black man who owned an entire plantation of other Black men, women, and children.

I couldn’t stop thinking of Moses, Augustus, Celeste, and all of the people who fought their way through to, finally, emancipation. Some people compare Edward P. Jones’ work to Faulkner's in the way he creates a complete… show more.

This kaleidoscopic book takes a sliver of American life in the era just before the Civil War in Virginia and tells a breathtaking story of slavery, human strangeness, cruelty, and moments of decency. It is stunningly written, and I feel that reading it made my life more expansive.

This book is so special in its depiction of human beings striving for survival.

It is the only book that shows African American as slaveholders. The charm is the clarity with which Jones writes. His gift is the ability to say complex things simply. He made me strive to be a better writer. His story helped me feel deeply in ways I had not previously known I could feel.

Toni Morrison once described her books as simple stories about complicated characters, and this also applies to The Known World. This beautifully-written novel, told from the perspective of slave-owners, surprises—but in this case, because they’re Black.

I’d come across an instance of African American slave-owning (which were very few) while researching my first book. Jones understands that the contradictions of the premise offer a great opportunity to explore the fiction of American racial identity.

In The Known World, there are no characters in white hats and others in black hats. The African American characters are no more noble… show more.

This novel takes for its premise the little-known fact that freed slaves in the South sometimes themselves owned slaves. While slavery was and is primarily a white institution, Jones wants to focus on larger questions of human trafficking, human dignity, and the broad culpability of slavery. But what I find most interesting about this novel is that it brings the question of slavery into a modern context, where it exists not just as a historical fact but as a contemporary plague that haunts us today. The multiple characters—White and Black—force us to question what each of us would do if… show more.

I realize that it is somewhat counterintuitive to recommend a historical novel of slavery in a list comprised of books that are supposed to inspire good feelings BUT The Known World is a masterful narrative of survival and redemption. It is lost on many readers that this book is a riff on William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom. Reading the two texts together highlights the depth and dimensionality that Jones affords the novel’s black characters, and allows them a rich interiority that makes for an intensely satisfying reading experience. While there is ample heartbreak in The Known World, the novel’s… show more.