The Known World

The Known World is a fascinating book. It follows the lives of a black family, whose father has bought his freedom, then his wife's, then his son's. As a grownup the son turns around and buys slaves. "Follows" is hardly the right term here but I'm not sure what else to use. The book does a marvelous job of moving back and forth between past and present and getting into the heads of different characters. It's not an uplifing book, by any means, but it's utterly engaging. While I knew that slavery has existed throughout the world in different times, I had no idea that there were ever black slave owners in the southern U.S.