Part ghost story, part profound reflection on the evils of slavery, Morrison’s Pulitzer-winning masterpiece synthesises myriad themes and ideas into a scorching, emotionally devastating narrative.
‘Ms. Morrison’s versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, Beloved will put them to rest. In three words or less, it’s a hair-raiser.’ - Margaret Atwood
The winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize and a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award, Beloved remains American novelist Toni Morrison’s crowning achievement. Dedicated to the ‘Sixty Million and more’ Africans and their descendants who died as a result of the slave trade, the novel remains both a mesmerising family story and a landmark depiction of the legacy of slavery, both on individuals and America’s national psyche.
Set in the mid-1800’s in the aftermath of the American Civil War, Beloved chronicles the experiences of Sethe, abandoned by her sons and living with her youngest daughter in Cincinnati. Sethe’s is a house haunted by secrets; of the violent, traumatic memories of her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky and by shameful secrets that refuse to stay buried.
When another Sweet Home survivor, Paul D, appears at Sethe’s door, his arrival heralds the mysterious coming of a woman, calling herself only ‘Beloved’. As the revenant Beloved makes her home with Sethe, so her life becomes increasingly devoted both to her ever-increasing and contrary demands for love and her insatiable need for atonement.
Deploying a lyrical, resonant and mythically charged style whilst remaining utterly rooted in the reality of her subject matter, Beloved exemplifies Toni Morrison’s talent for telling a vital story in the right way. In its refusal to shy away from the horrors experienced by Sethe, Morrison’s novel reflects the countless - often unspoken - atrocities committed by whites against people of colour throughout history. But Beloved is not a polemic. It interweaves ideas of motherhood, family, folklore and community, creating a narrative that is never less than utterly engrossing. The result is a rich, fully realised story that, as Jane Smiley writes in the Guardian, is ‘likely to mould or change a reader's sense of the world.’
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099760115
Number of pages: 352
Weight: 245 g
Dimensions: 198 x 128 x 23 mm
'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all'
‘I adored her honesty. I admired the way she occupied her space in the world. I believed her’
‘[Toni Morrison] led and we followed, and she showed us the beauty of the language, and the power that was unleashed when that beauty was allied to a great heart and a ferocious mind’
‘No other writer in my lifetime, or perhaps ever, has married so completely an understanding of the structures of power with knowledge of the human heart’
‘Toni Morrison is the greatest chronicler of the American experience that we have ever known’
‘Morrison is, to me, the best writer the English-speaking world has ever seen’
‘Morrison’s legacy in commemorating slavery’s survivors will endure and uplift for centuries to come'
‘Her every word a caress, her every sentence an embrace, her every paragraph, a cupping of her hands around our faces that said: I know you, I see you, we are together’
‘I have never read anyone else like her . . . She was an opener of doors, doors that seemed they might always be shut, doors shut so tight they seemed not to be doors at all’
‘Her legacy is total excellence . . . she is magnificent, her emotional intelligence is second to none and her bravery was equal to her artistry’
‘Morrison almost single-handedly took American fiction forward in the second half of the twentieth century’
‘[Toni Morrison’s] irreverence was godly’ - Guardian
A beautiful book and it's beautifully written - Kit de Waal, Good Housekeeping UK
My favourite book of all time - Sareeta Domingo, Good Housekeeping
Morrison's stunning trilogy is an evocation of black life over the past four centuries. It defies summary. Completed almost 25 years ago, these novels top anything produced by any American writer including Hemingway, Updike and DeLillo - Trevor Phillips, Sunday Times
[A] beautiful, haunting novel - Stig Abell, Sunday Times
More than one of Morrison's books could be classed as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it - Bernice McFadden, author of SUGAR, Guardian
A triumph - Margaret Atwood, New York Times Book Review
A magnificent achievement... An American masterpiece - A. S. Byatt, Guardian
There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you - New Yorker
