What a brilliant read!

It wasn't a particularly easy book. There are A LOT of characters and there are many threads to the story.

It all weaves together in very interesting and unpredictable ways.

In the end it was well worth the effort.

This is one of those books where every aspect of the writing clicked for me.

I loved it. It made me reexamine what makes me who I am as a person and as an American.

I think this book changed me a little for the better.

It was truly a captivating literary experience. The complex web of characters and storylines kept me on the edge of my seat throughout.

The author's skill in intertwining these elements was masterful.

Each character was vividly drawn, with their own unique personalities and motives.

The story took unexpected turns, keeping me engaged and eager to discover what would happen next.

By the time I reached the end, I felt a sense of satisfaction and a newfound appreciation for the power of literature to shape our perspectives and transform us.

This book will definitely stay with me for a long time.

Glorious account that gets past cliches. The premise is that two slaves in 1840s Virginia bought their freedom, but their son stayed a little too long under the master's care. What does the family do when the son starts his own farm and buys his own slaves?

The mastery of Jones' writing comes in the sense of history that he lends to minute objects, chance encounters, and incantatory reveries within a frought landscape. He doesn't just tell a story; he creates a vivid world.

Not content to write an unwritten history of forgotten people, Jones re-writes the histories that have been written. He cites documents that purport to explain the historical phenomenon of free blacks who owned slaves. Passages that carry runaway characters to the north also tie in academic treatises from the next century, deeds and warrants and court decisions that attempted to justify white supremacy, and the momentoes that emancipated children carry to their deathbeds.

Jones doesn't neglect to include tales of individual transformation, collective redemption, or international implications in this epic. Characters may come and go like fleeting ghosts, yet the marks they leave may remain. When the words of the plantation master and deeds of the escaped overseer have faded into ineffectual memory, we readers are left with both the sense that an institution has gone horribly wrong and that the people within it can be honorably right.

Jones didn't attempt to detail the national debate over slavery that was current at that time. That limitation on his project was probably a good one. It allows us to see the human effects that rhetoric had covered, and allowed him to devote his attentions to demonstrating the range of positions that people could occupy in relation to the institution. Whether you're descended from a slave, a master, a freed man, a black woman passing as white, an unwilling overseer, a treacherous deputy, a conscientious drunk, or an immigrant Irishwoman sold into prostitution, there's something in this book for you. And the irony is that there is no irony here. Sincerity is the least of what we have to do, and memory is only the start of making a history that hasn't stopped.

A knockout!

Doesn't he have a new book coming out in the New Year? It's really exciting to think about. I truly hope it comes out soon. He is such a wonderful writer. His words have the power to transport readers to different worlds and make them feel a whole range of emotions.

Why hasn't Oprah made this into a film? It seems like such an obvious choice. His stories are so engaging and would translate well to the big screen. What's she waiting for? Maybe there are legal issues or other complications that we don't know about. But I really hope that one day, we'll be able to see his books brought to life on the silver screen.

I can just imagine the beautiful visuals and the powerful performances that would bring his characters to life. It would be a cinematic experience like no other.

I attended a workshop with some friends. During the event, we all went around the room and recommended books that had truly moved us that year. I don't remember which book I suggested then, but I vividly recall one woman in particular. She was really in love with this book (or perhaps I should say she was more in love with Edward Jones' writing).

At the end of the workshop, we had a gift exchange raffle and she included this book as her contribution. To my great surprise and delight, I was the lucky recipient of this free copy.

I was immediately interested in this historical novel. It is set in a fictional place in Virginia during the antebellum era and tells the story of a former slave who ends up owning slaves. The strangeness of the story and the unique angle it takes as a slave narrative are truly intriguing. What's also appealing is the way the omniscient narration allows the reader to approach the story without the moral judgment one might typically reserve for this kind of story. Since the distance of the narration allows one to quickly realize what the story is trying to showcase: how slavery has already poisoned the integrity of all those involved.

The framework of the novel is composed of anecdotal stories within stories. The pacing is often interrupted for a mini scene or two, or the introduction of yet another character who may reappear later or simply disappear. In other words, it is like a book of puzzle pieces: one is added, taken away, another picked up. Oh yes, there's the whole, whoops, maybe not, here goes another piece. So although I admired the writing and story setup in the beginning, I just wasn't in the right space to complete this novel. It has been a while since I added a book to my "did-not-finish" list; alas, this one has just made the list. However, this is not a failed attempt at reading this novel. I remember not being able to finish Ngugi wa Thiong'o's "Wizard of the Crow" only to later fall in love with his novel, "Petals of Blood". With that in mind, I look forward to reading Jones' "Lost in the City".

The story of a black-skinned slave named Henry is a Tunisian who has now become a master and behaves with the black slaves in the same way that his own master did with him.

It was one of the most beautiful works of American literature about slavery.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2004.

Winner of the Dublin IMPAC Award in 2005.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2003.

This remarkable story not only delves into the harsh reality of slavery but also explores the complex nature of human behavior and the cycle of power and oppression. Henry's transformation from a slave to a master is a thought-provoking journey that forces readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about our past. The book's numerous awards are a testament to its literary merit and its ability to resonate with audiences around the world. It serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of remembering history and working towards a more just and equal future.

Here is a remarkable book that delves into the world of black slave owners in the antebellum South! My curiosity was instantly aroused. Moreover, this book has amassed an array of prestigious awards:

* Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2004)

* International Dublin Literary Award (2005)

* Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (2004)

* National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2003)

* Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee for Debut Fiction (2004)

* National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (2003)

I knew without a doubt that I had to give it a read.

I'm glad I did, but to claim that I loved it would be inaccurate. It's just okay, hence my two-star rating.

The story lacks a true central character as he dies right at the beginning. It's 1855 when Henry Townsend passes away. He is black and was formerly a slave, but his parents purchased his freedom. He leaves behind no children, only a wife, Caldonia, a twenty-eight-year-old educated black woman born free, and his property consisting of thirty-three slaves and fifty acres in Manchester County, Virginia. The book is about the chaos that ensues afterwards, but in reality, it's about life in the South during the antebellum era, about the mindsets of both Blacks and Whites in that time period.

The story is narrated by an omniscient narrator who knows the thoughts of each character, their past experiences, and their future fates. It is this all-seeing narrator that molds the entire atmosphere of the story. However, this narrator, despite knowing everything, is not particularly skilled at presenting a coherent narrative. In one sentence, the tense may shift from the present to the future and back again. In the next, it flips to the past. It's easy to become disoriented. Character after character is introduced, with snippets of their lives in the past, present, and future. We are presented with an entire community of individuals - Whites and Blacks, a Native American or two, the free and the slaves, a sheriff and his deputy. The omniscient narrator is constantly repeating who each one is, which is beneficial in one aspect, but it makes the flow of the tale choppy. It stops and starts, goes backward and forward, and is often confusing. The use of the omniscient narrator is taken to the extreme.

It would be nice to have one or two characters to guide us through the story. But that's not the case here. There is a whole group of characters, and they are difficult to connect with. We don't get close to any one individual. In the afterword, the author points out that he aimed to create characters who were neither entirely good nor entirely bad, each unique in their own way. We do see that here, but we fail to feel any emotional attachment to any of them. What we do get is a strong sense of being part of a large community. We are there, one among many, living in the antebellum South. This does give us a hands-on feel for life at that time and place and how people were thinking.

Kevin Free narrates the audiobook. It's easy to follow, the speed is appropriate, and his intonations are well-executed. The narration performance is good, so I've given it three stars.

There’s a certain irony that I found myself reading more than half of this wrenching, ugly, hopeful, stirring, and grievous book while cradling a sleeping baby in my arms.

After all, within the pages of this account set in pre-Civil War Virginia, there is a great deal of life and death.

I initially knew very little about the book, save for the fact that the author penned it after learning about freed Black folks who owned slaves. As I delved deeper into this issue, which is bound to cause dissonance, disbelief, and perhaps even disgust in any modern conversation circle, I found myself increasingly moved and disturbed.

This is a difficult book, not only because it offers an unflinching look at slavery but also because it is written in a style reminiscent of James Joyce, with numerous asides and streams of consciousness. The author seamlessly weaves between generations and back again, often within the same paragraph. Yet, despite its challenges, it worked for me. It reads like a memoir of an entire county’s 150-year history, complete with the stories of dozens of families.

The result is simply unforgettable. There are characters whose faces I could envision as I read, and whose stories I became deeply invested in, and they will continue to haunt me. It’s not just the fictional characterization that lingers; it’s the blatant display of the ugliness of humanity that is so disturbing and, sadly, still relevant today.

As I bid farewell to the slaves, slaveowners, children of both, ministers, sheriffs, and patrollers in this novel, I will not forget their names. And I can’t help but wonder: who would I have been in Manchester County, Virginia?

Books can pose difficulties for numerous reasons, and this particular one presents challenges due to some rather extraordinary factors.

It is not linguistically convoluted, nor is there much that is mysterious about the nature of the plot. For the most part, the story unfolds in a straightforward and realistic manner. On a word-by-word basis, it makes sense. However, what complicates matters is the author's remarkable perception of the novel as a complete artistic vision. This is one of those rare and special works where everything initially appears in a state of disorder, but as you continue reading, it gradually resolves into a vivid picture with depth, color, light, and shade, and with remarkable internal consistency.

The novel is set in Manchester County, a fictional region in Virginia, sometime in the early to mid-nineteenth century. More precisely, it is centered around the world of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave whose parents purchased his freedom when he was a child. After learning a trade and accumulating some wealth, Townsend buys his own plantation and slaves. This may come as a surprise to modern readers, but we are led to understand that he was not an exception and acted in accordance with the laws and culture of his era. However, Henry's death occurs relatively early in the book, and thus the main action lies in recalling the story of his youth, how he achieved his position in life, and what transpired after his passing when his wife, Caldonia, inherited the farm and its property (both human and otherwise).

At first, I found it quite challenging to follow. Within the first fifty or so pages, the author introduces a large number of diverse characters and is not only meticulous in mapping out their relationships but also in introducing elements of their past and future stories in asides that often seem to have little connection to the immediate events. I read somewhere that there is no present tense in this book, which I think is a perfect description. For much of the first two-thirds of the text, the writing is unmoored in time,跳跃 from moment to moment across years in a way that frequently seems inscrutable.

It is not until relatively late in the book that things start to cohere. Eventually, the narrative stabilizes a little, and the true pattern of the author's wizardry begins to form broad arcs across the pages. I can't stop thinking about one particular moment, a truly awful event that occurs in the story. In any other book, it might seem like an unnecessary act of cruelty inflicted upon an admirable character simply to make them appear even more noble. But such is the author's effort to develop the history and motivations of both the victim and the perpetrator over the course of tens and hundreds of pages that when this horrible thing happens, it has the immediate, painful quality of lived experience. It somehow seems both inevitable (that such a person would do such a thing) and by chance (that it should happen to this person, at that moment, that night).

Leaps across a character's life within the chronology of a plot may not be entirely uncommon in a historical novel, but what makes this book even more unusual is that it frequently describes the final fates of even the most insignificant characters. Some of these descriptions are as brief as a throwaway sentence – for example, a kidnapped slave girl is casually mentioned as later becoming the first black woman to obtain a Ph.D. in America – while others are detailed and scattered like breadcrumbs throughout the book. It is a postmodern touch that constantly reminds the reader that this is a novel framed with the benefit of educated hindsight, a kind of tacit acknowledgment of the godlike power with which the author determines the fates of these characters. This does not mean that anyone is more deserving of a happy ending than others, and the slaves who ultimately achieve emancipation and some form of additional opportunity in life are few compared to those who are killed, die suddenly, or quietly disappear. But almost everyone gets an ending of some sort, and it usually recognizes that, regardless of wealth, freedom, or other circumstances, these were just human beings who were hated, feared, loved, and missed to varying degrees.

One final aspect worth mentioning is the author's own intrusions into the text in the form of historical references and citations. Often, a detail regarding local law or a particularly interesting set of statistics is presented as fact. If it weren't for the brief interview with Jones at the end of my edition, I might have accepted all of these as true. But they aren't – as far as I know, they are all fictional. Personally, I didn't find this offensive, but I can understand how some might consider it problematic given that we still live in a time when people would deny or downplay the scale of the atrocity that formed the foundation of modern American society.

Could a person read this and accept its account as entirely truthful? And if they did, what would they think if they discovered it was fiction? What else might they come to doubt? I'm not sure I can answer that. My own perspective is one of admiration for the craftsmanship involved in creating something so utterly convincing. I don't believe in moral or immoral books; to paraphrase Wilde, they are either well-written or poorly written, and in any medium, there can be no accounting for the vagaries of taste and prejudice. Perhaps it would be better to simply assume the best from our readers and writers and leave the rest open to interpretation.

Lovely

The way EPJ structured the story was truly lovely. The care he took with the characters was remarkable. Each character was developed with such detail and nuance that they seemed to come alive on the page. The build-up of the story was also so unique. It was not like anything I have ever read before, or perhaps even remember reading. EPJ's writing style added to the overall charm and loveliness of the story. It was a pleasure to follow along and see how the plot unfolded. The pacing was just right, keeping me engaged from beginning to end. Overall, I would highly recommend this story to anyone looking for a lovely and unique read.

The Known World is an incredibly complex and remarkable masterpiece that delves deep into the dark and morally convoluted world of slavery. In this novel, Jones crafts a vivid and immersive world that allows the reader to not only see but also hear, smell, and taste every aspect of it, right down to the very core.

Each of the dozens of characters in the story has a rich and detailed back story, which adds depth and authenticity to their personalities. What's more, most of these characters also have a future story that may be revealed at any unexpected moment, regardless of the linear timeline of the narrative. As Edward P. Jones himself said in an interview, "I, as the 'god' of the people in the book, could see their first days and their last days and all that was in between, and those people did not have linear lives as I saw all that they had lived."

However, keeping track of the numerous characters can be a challenging task. Fortunately, some editions of the book, like mine, come with a character list at the conclusion of the novel. This list would have been an invaluable resource for me had I discovered it before I pushed my memory skills to their limits.

The Known World has received numerous accolades and has won several prestigious prizes, including the highly coveted Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2004. Its profound exploration of slavery and its complex characters have made it a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the history and moral implications of this dark period in American history.

So I just re-read this book because I wanted to think about it again.

And I have to say, I did not change my mind much. First off, I hadn't remembered any of the characters and just a bit of the plot. The book just felt shallow again on the second read.

This book approaches a morally unambiguous topic, like slavery, from a slightly morally convoluted perspective: black slave-owners. I doubt that there were many black slave-owners around, but the approach really sheds more light on slavery and its effects. The book is well-written and subtle, but not quite poetic. It reads more like a historical account that is enlivened with some great stories.

I read this book because it was on a list of 10 best books of the decade. And I am not sure I would rate it that highly, but I did enjoy reading an account about slavery that was not so predictable or cliche. Not all the slaves are pure and masters bad. People just got stuck in situations and were not strong enough to step out of them. And it seems more realistic and terrifying to view such a tragic part of US history in that light. You want to paint slave-owners in a terrible light and not at all be able to relate with them, but unfortunately, it was not that simple.

The book makes you think about the complexity of human nature and the various factors that contributed to the institution of slavery. It shows that there were no easy answers and that even those who were on the "wrong" side of history were often products of their environment. Overall, while I may not consider this book to be one of the best of the decade, it is still a worthwhile read that offers a unique perspective on a dark chapter in American history.

Reading this novel set in a small rural Virginian community in the decade prior to the Civil War was truly an enchanting experience, much like observing a captivating tango.

The narrative gracefully twirled into the future, delicately brushing against the characters, only to then pivot and swing back to the present. It looped around skillfully, lassoing in those individuals or elements that were lurking unnoticed in the shadows. This book delved deep into the complex web of tensions. There were the palpable tensions between black and white, between the black slave and the black slave owner. Additionally, it explored the dichotomy of private and public morality, the struggle between survival and longing, and the intricate dance of love and fear.

The language employed was exquisitely smooth, flowing effortlessly without a single misstep. It was as if the words themselves were dancers, moving in harmony to create a vivid and engaging story that left a lasting impression on the reader.