People kept telling me how amazing this book was, and I didn't think it would live up to the hype. But it absolutely did. It's amazing.

The Known World does this weird thing: it cites its sources. And it's weird because they don't exist. There are passages like this:

[Manchester, VA] went through a period of years and years of what University of Virginia historian Roberta Murphy in a 1948 book would call 'peace and prosperity'.

Jones goes on to tell you the publication history of that book, and a few more things about what was in it, and to imply that Roberta Murphy was a little racist. But there is no Roberta Murphy, there is no book, there is no Manchester, VA. What is Jones up to?

Wyatt Mason notes:

What research on the subject Jones undertook was, in fact, quickly derailed after he happened upon an account of a white slave owner who spent her days abusing one of her black slaves, a little girl, by beating her head against a wall. “If I had wanted to tell the whole story of slavery, Americans couldn’t have taken that,” Jones told an interviewer. “People want to think that there was slavery, and then we got beyond it. People don’t want to hear that a woman would take a child and bang her head against the wall day after day. It’s nice that I didn’t read all those books. What I would have had to put down is far, far harsher and bleaker.

Too much of a bummer? It's not that The Known World is a feel-good novel. Ears and Achilles tendons will be sliced. It follows the rules of slavery books: slave narratives always had happy endings; later, fictional slave narratives always have sad endings. But Toni Morrison has a different opinion about what Americans can and can't take. Shit, so does Harriet Jacobs. And Jones knows this, so he's being disingenuous.

And you notice that he's talking about books he didn't actually read. NPR says,

Jones collected two shelves of books about slavery, but never got around to reading them. Still, the author was able to use his imagination, and stories he had heard growing up, to make his characters come alive. "I decided the people I'd created were real enough and I had just accumulated enough information about what the world was like in the South before 1865 to allow me to lie and get away with it," he says.

Look, I don't mean to say Jones isn't telling the truth. I don't know if he is, and neither does he; neither of us read those two shelves of books about slavery. But the citation of imaginary sources in the book itself serves to either add authenticity that's undeserved, or - if you follow up on those sources - underline its lack of authenticity. I'm puzzled by it.

This sort of meta-sourcing has been done before - by Nabokov in Pale Fire, by Cervantes, and in its closest parallel by Borges in his first collection, Universal History of Iniquity, which also confused me. It's especially jarring here, maybe just because I find the truth of slavery a fraught subject, and maybe because the layers go so deep - even in interviews about his lack of authenticity, he appears to be consciously inauthentic. I don't know, man, I don't get it.

But anyway: is it a good made-up story about made-up people? Yeah, sure, totally. Eventually. The first half is a little annoying. There's a lot of chronological foofarah - skipping all over the place for no pressing reason - and a ginormous cast it's hard to keep track of, and our super-omniscient narrator often takes time out to tell you some trivial character's entire life story, which you didn't really need. But the second half ratchets up the tension to pure shit-your-pantsville, as that sprawling cast all meet their assorted fates. It makes up for some irritation in the first half.

So yeah, as a novel it's excellent. The authenticity issue, I bring up mostly because we take this book seriously; it won a Pulitzer. It deserves to be looked carefully at. I looked carefully and I was confused by its truth.

Manchester County, Virginia a place where a slave became Master. His name was Henry Townsend. After being reared by William Robbins and purchased by his parents, he decided to become "Massa" to the strong disappoint of his parents who were former slaves of William Robbins. Working and buying your freedom was a source of power for Augustus and Mildred Townsend. Identity was everything.

A town where justice was dispensed at will by Sheriff Skiffington who could not completely find his God. Black & White - Slave & Free it all becomes knowing what degree of status you are considered in Manchester County, Virginia.

My favorite quote: "The free men in Manchester knew the tenuousness of their lives and always endeavored to be upstanding: n  they knew they were slaves with just another title."n

Yeah. Pultizer Prize winning and I give it 2.5 stars (WHERE ARE THOSE HALF STAR RATINGS OTIS!?!??!) I found the story slow and it did not move me at all. It was, however, a wonderful cure for my insomnia.

I felt that this book was important to read because it deals with a piece of American history that, like Europe's Holocaust, can never be comprehended, but should never be forgotten, either. The story is told from the less common third person omniscient point of view, which made it read more like a history book than a novel in some parts. It's hard to say which, if any, of the characters was the protagonist. This book sets itself apart from other books set in the antebellum South because the slave-owning family at the center of the tale are themselves Black. In an interview at the end of the book, the author says that he got the idea from reading a pamphlet about a Jew who joined the American Nazi party. He said it was hard to envision a member of a group that had such a strong history of oppression actually joining with the oppressors. He was further fascinated to discover that some members of his race had owned slaves and helped to oppress other Blacks in the South.

There were definitely some parts of the book that were extremely uncomfortable to read about. The message was not a pretty one, and you could tell that, unlike the fairy-tale characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin, most of Jones's characters were unlikely to see a happy ending in their lifetimes. But there were redeeming stories, and occasional glimpses into a positive future, if not for the characters themselves, for their posterity. Though not an easy read by any means, I highly recommend it to those who take an interest in this particular historical period.

Set in the American South (principally Virginia) in the 1850s, this is an unusual novel on the theme of slavery. It's based on the intertwined stories of a disparate group of characters: black, white, Cherokee; free man, slave, and slaveowner, all of whom connect in some way to the "central" characters of Augustus Townsend and his son Henry. Augustus is a former slave and talented carpenter, who was allowed by his former owner to use his carpentry skills to earn money, and who eventually bought his own freedom and later that of his son. Henry later becomes a slaveowner himself, much to his father's anger and distress. I live in the UK and confess that until reading this novel I was completely unaware that free black people who themselves owned slaves did actually exist in the American South, something which I have seen confirmed in subsequent reading. At the same time the novel makes it clear that the free black population lived a precarious existence.

Initially I didn't take to this novel. In the early chapters I found the story disjointed and it was hard to identify with any of the characters, but gradually I found myself more and more drawn into it and to the fates of the characters. My initial impression of a two-star "OK" rating changed first to three and then to four by the end of the book. At times it was not an easy read; many of the characters suffer (or inflict) terrible cruelty and injustice, but for me the novel brought out the almost daily moral choices faced by everyone who lives in a society of slaves and slaveowners, even if they themselves fall into neither category.

[Review written in 2014, typos corrected 02/11/2020]

[3.5]

Allora qua c'è un problema. L'inizio. L'inizio di questo libro è incomprensibile.
Lo stile è confusionario e come se non bastasse ci sono nomi su nomi e tu ti ritrovi a non capire nulla, a non capire chi ha fatto cosa, cosa sta succedendo a questo ma poi chi è questo? da dove salta fuori? ma non era morto? o era vivo e non ho capito? o sto facendo confusiona tra presente passato futuro e congiuntivo? Ecco. Mi facevo un giro in lavatrice e ne uscivo meno confusa.

Poi un po' alla volta le cose si assestano. Mi sono capita con i nomi e con lo stile, soprattutto lo stile ora della fine è quello che mi ha infastidito meno. La questione troppi personaggi secondo me rimane. A una certa non ho più avuto problemi nel distinguerli, ma non mi fregava nulla di nessuno. C'è stato un momento in cui sono rimasta male per una cosa che è successa, ma di base questo libro non mi ha fatto affezionare a nessuno e questo rimane un grande difetto per quelli che sono i miei gusti.

Di libri sul tema ce ne sono tanti, questo secondo me non è tra i migliori, nonostante abbia vinto il Pulitzer.

"...encouraged by the life of segregation forced on me for the previous four years by the racial laws-- to live in an unrealistic world of my own...) Primo Levi "Survival in Auschwitz

All while reading The Known World, I kept thinking of Nazi concentration camps, and the way the Nazis frequently made use of Polish prisoners to enforce their system. Henry Townsend, a central figure in the novel although he is dead for most of it, is a slave bought and freed by his parents who decides to pursue the wealth and power that comes with being a slave-owner in the south. He is not the only black character to own slaves, and during the course of the narrative, they all must confront what it means to perpetuate a morally corrupt system that oppresses people who look exactly like themselves. And, *spolier alert*, they all fail to respond to that challenge in ways that readers are likely to find heroic. The world they inhabit seems isolated, unrealistic, and unsustainable; yet they always seem surprised when it is disrupted.

Jones ambles along behind characters with a rather detached eye, so the characters become allegorical in a way. Henry's former master represents the big money; Sheriff Skiffington- the law; his cousin- tradition, etc. In this way, Jones can explore how a complex, free society perpetuated one of the largest crimes against humanity the world has seen. The free women in particular seem doubly trapped. Despite their educations, they remain inert--holding on to grief, or anger, or just protecting personal interests. When changes in character occur, they occur through the slaves--in moments of forgiveness or near Biblical acts of grace.

The book is dense and, for the most part, beautifully written. Although some readers (my mom, for example) found the storytelling dry, I thought Jones was at his best when most detached. He gives the reader the power to witness and respond in her own way.

The Known World is an unconventional book, the oddest facet for me being the lack of a main character. Henry Townsend serves as a sort of focal point, but he dies at the beginning of the novel; equally important are his wife Caldonia, parents Augustus and Mildred, the overseer Moses, the slaves Elias, Celeste, Stamford and Alice, the teacher Fern, Henry's former master William Robbins, and the sheriff John Skiffington and his cousin Counsel. The secondary cast, of course, is exponentially larger. Then there is the structure; the narrative jumps around a lot, primarily between the 1840s and the 1850s, but with some leaps forward or backward in time.

If you can handle all that, the result is a rich and rewarding read.

This book zeroes in on what one reviewer has called a "footnote of history": black slaveowners. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Not so, as it turns out. If I had to name the #1 best thing about this book, I would say it's the mature, nuanced way Jones deals with the provocative issue of slavery. This is no black-and-white book that beats you over the head with "slavery is wrong!!" by wallowing in descriptions of whippings, rapes, and families forcibly separated (although at least two of the above are present); white people are not divided into the Good Guys (all of them volunteers on the Underground Railroad) and the Bad Guys (all of them racist, greedy and cruel), nor are blacks stereotyped as the good-hearted but not necessarily intelligent victims. This leads to what I would call the next best thing about this book: the authenticity of the characters. (Second best not because there's any fault with them, but because lots of books have solid characterization, while very few can take a look at something like slavery in such a thoughtful and restrained way). It's not just the realistic portrayal of individuals, each one unique despite the size of the cast, but the way they relate to one another and their known world feels entirely real. There's no placeholder for 21st century ideas here; these characters accept their world as it is, as most real people do, and try to make the best of it. This book is sometimes heartbreaking, but never revisionist.

Then there's the setting and customs, which feel three-dimensional and well-researched. Jones doesn't just tell us what the slave cabins look like, but shows us the family and community life within them. And the dialogue: not only does it flow well, but it evokes a particular accent without bogging down in dialect so strong you have to sound out the words. Need I go on?

Although this book has certainly earned its 5 stars, it's not perfect; unrelated sentences are sometimes added in the middle of paragraphs, details occasionally contradict one another (I love Jones's specificity though; he's one to tell you everything from characters' exact ages to the price of a mule), the jumping around in time can be confusing, and a couple scenes veer bizarrely into magical realism. Still, this isn't enough to really detract from the reading experience. My one caveat is, given the complexity of the book and the number of characters, that readers who try to go through this one at 10 pages a night before bed are likely to wind up frustrated; it requires serious attention. Those who have the time should not be disappointed.

Three books into a career, and I’ve only read two them, it would be ridiculous to declare this Jones’ masterpiece. Still one is tempted to hyperbole. And it’s a very, very good book. The Known World describes the plantation world of Henry Townsend, a freed black who owns a score or so of slaves in a fictional county in antebellum Virginia (with some foreshadowing to the years after the Civil War). Townsend had his freedom bought by his father, Augustus, who first bought his own, then his wife’s and lastly his son’s freedom. The other major plantation owner in the novel is William Robbins, a white man who owned the three Townsends and who also has a black mistress with whom he has children who he is raising as his own, though not as whites. He embraces slavery and can brutally support the institution’s well-being, even as he supports Augustus, a skilled carpenter in buying his freedom and becomes a near father figure to Henry, who is nearly disowned by his own father when he begins to buy slaves. It is a complex novel with a great diversity of characters, few without redeeming or compromising traits—Darcy, the slave speculator who lives off the profits from selling kidnapped freemen and women and hijacked slaves, is without any shades of gray, just a dark, reprehensible soul top to bottom; so too is Harvey Travis, the slave patroller and Counsel Skiffington, a plantation owner whose life is destroyed by a smallpox epidemic that kills his family and all his slaves. The other primary characters: Augustus Townsend, Henry Townsend, Robbins, Moses, Henry’s widow, Fern Elston, John Skiffington, Barnum Kinsey, and Alice Night, are fully rounded individuals who live in the world they live in, one totally compromised by the institution of slavery and all the complex implications of such a fundamental immorality (where racist beliefs excuse behavior that is otherwise unfathomable). It wreaks havoc with nearly everyone’s soul, yet also affords opportunities for surprising acts of heroism, kindness, and accomplishment that inspire in part because they occur on a landscape as bleak as any the world has known. Jones’ novel makes a mockery of the simplicities of Gone with the Wind and, alas, Roots, and warrants a neighborly place to the best of Twain, Johnson, Faulkner, Murray, and Mathiessen. Jones is a writer of the first rank and who knows what lies ahead for him but the culture is already richer for what he’s contributed thus far.

Manchester County, Virginia doesn't exist. Never has. After reading The Known World, however, you'd be forgiven if you thought you could take a tour of it's plantations and slave cemetaries on your vacation to colonial Williamsburg. The complicated pre-civil war Southern society that Edward P. Jones creates feels as real and surreal as any factual history of slavery you've read. It was not so much the story of Henry Townsend, a black slave owner, and all the people that his death allows us to meet that engaged me. It was the world, a world where I could taste the soil I might till and the women I might marry and the terrible choices I might be faced with, that put it's claws in me and refused to let go.

It took me nearly 2 months to finish the book's 388 pages. It should've been a quick read. It is a fascinating place with peculiar problems and characters I cried for on more than one occasion. It should've been a quick read but I kept asking myself this question: who would I have been? The slave, toiling away in the field? The overseer, unable to see the world for what it truly was? The freed man, working desperately to free the rest of his family? The smart child, taken under the wing of the rich white slave owner and convinced that there was nothing wrong with owning another human being? The broken black man tortured by his family's wealth built on the backs of men and women that look just like me? The slave too proud, too strong, too powerful to let another take his freedom? Who would I have been?

Who am I now?

In matters of race, there is always that fool's point, usually made by a white person (though not always) that asks,"why aren't you over it, already? Can't we just let it go?" It is a way to end an uncomfortable conversation. The reasons don't matter. I know many a person for which the sticky tar baby of race in America is simply a discussion they can't stick their hands in. It is too difficult. Too raw. Too cloudy to be sure that people will remain friends after an honest chat. The way I feel when I read books like The Known World is my answer. No matter how well-adjusted, how integrated, how loving of my fellow man, how multiculti kumbayah I am, I'm not over it. I can't let it go.

This fictional world was very real not all that long ago. It's effects still ripple through our every day. The world I know doesn't exist without it.

Highly highly recommended.

This book is so great b/c of its ability to express all of the moral complexities of slavery pre-civil war. Duty, religion, morality, justice, law, success, conformity, experience……all contribute to the intricacies of slavery. The main characters revolve around Henry, who is a former slave that upholds an estate of slaves. Other characters are a God-fearing slave owner, a slave owner who falls in love with a black woman and has a child, and an educated black woman. Although rare, I had never known that blacks had owned slaves. It is masterfully written and draws you in, making you imagine what you would think and do during that time…and what you could convince yourself to believe lessening your negative reaction to the idea of slavery (or maybe just not allowing yourself to see slavery’s impact on the individual life as what it really was….crippling). While at the same time, you get a glimpse of what it must have been like to be a slave, from being a woman who is stripped down so that a white man can look at her to see if he wants to buy her and take her away from her family to being physically abused. There are contradictions and “well-meant” things that did not turn out well. This is a great book to digest and discuss. I love a historical, relational book that makes you think!! The author also writes about historical documents and events that allow you to believe it actually happened.

“Despite vowing never to own a slave, Skiffington had no trouble doing his job to keep the institution of slavery going, an institution even God himself had sanctioned throughout the Bible. Skiffington had learned from his father how much solace there was in separation God’s law from Caesar’s law. ‘Render your body unto them,’ his father had taught, ‘but know your soul belongs to God.’ As long as Skiffington and Winifred lived within the light that came from God’s law, from the Bible, nothing on earth, not even his duty as a sheriff to the Caesars, could deny them the kingdom of God. ‘We will not own slaves,’ Skiffington promised God, and he promised each morning he went to his knees to pray. Though everyone in the country saw Minerva the wedding present as their property, the Skiffingtons did not feel they owned her, not in the way whites and few blacks owned slaves” (this was written about a young girl taken by her parents that they came to own)

“Henry, the law will protect you as a master to your slave, and it will not flinch when it protects you. That protection lasts from here all the way to the death of that property. But the law expects you to know what is master and what is slave. And it does not matter if you are not much darker than your slave. The law is blind to that. You are the master and that is all the law wants to know. The law will come to you and stand behind you. But if you roll around and be a playmate to your property, and your property turns round and bites you, the law will come to you still, will but it not come with the full heart and all the deliberate speed you need. You will have pointed to the line that separates you from your property and told your property that the line does not matter.” (Henry goes on to slap his slave right after and say “why don’t you never do what I tell you? N--, you never do. You just do what I tell you from now on.”)

“How could anyone, white or not white, think that he could hold on to his land and servants and his future if he thought himself no higher than what he owned.”