“There was one stick upon which Augustus had carved Adam at the base. But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself that Jones employs language that sound eerily like biblical history, at one point or another reads like old-testament lineage-and yes, to be cliché, like the gospel truth. Jones so artfully slipped me into a fiction/nonfiction grey area by his ability to pose his characters and events as perfectly plausible and vividly existential that I had to hear firsthand and from him that it all was made-up, even though it read like historical fact. It was important that my review take root only after watching interviews of author, Edward P. In the case of The Known World, doing this has never been more revealing. The first thing I do before diving into writing a review is google the author, interviews, and what’s been written to date about the book. Once you start the book you are hooked….Consider this novel necessary reading. Dialogue is pitch perfect, landscapes seem authentic, and personal squabbles are always adjudicated with wisdom. Stunning….Words flow quietly and build toward frequent crescendos that are breathtaking. One of those rare works of fiction that both wound and heal. It belongs on the shelf with other classics of slavery, like Toni Morrison’s Beloved and William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. Brilliant.…So utterly original that it makes most everything previously written about slavery seem outdated and pedestrian.
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