
Twelve Years a Slave: A True Story - Collins Classics (Paperback)
Solomon Northup (author)- We can order this from the publisher
The shocking first-hand account of one man's remarkable fight for freedom; now an award-winning motion picture.
'Why had I not died in my young years - before God had given me children to love and live for? What unhappiness and suffering and sorrow it would have prevented. I sighed for liberty; but the bondsman's chain was round me, and could not be shaken off.'
1841: Solomon Northup is a successful violinist when he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Taken from his family in New York State - with no hope of ever seeing them again - and forced to work on the cotton plantations in the Deep South, he spends the next twelve years in captivity until his eventual escape in 1853.
First published in 1853, this extraordinary true story proved to be a powerful voice in the debate over slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. It is a true-life testament of one man's courage and conviction in the face of unfathomable injustice and brutality: its influence on the course of American history cannot be overstated.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780007580422
Number of pages: 304
Weight: 140 g
Dimensions: 178 x 111 x 19 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'The most remarkable book ever issued from the American press.' Detroit Tribune
'For sheer drama, few accounts of slavery match Solomon Northup's tale of abduction from freedom and forcible enslavement.' Ira Berlin
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“Read it and you will understand.”
Having seen the film version of this I thought I was prepared to read Solomon's story but I really was not. Reading his story in his own words, hearing him tell his tale, his own struggles, doubts and... More

““My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!””
This book is told from the view point of a man who was a slave, not some historian’s interpretation of the events or a novelist’s aggrandisement. It is a frank narrative of the events that surrounded one man’s... More
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