This is a novel about slavery in Manchester County, Virginia. This book comprises a series of linked short stories or vignettes and the writing style is quite unusual, with the author switching back and forth, not just with respect to characters and story threads, but also by making use of a non-linear time sequence. It makes the story to become quite fragmentary in some 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.

Here is my video review: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC325...

On the surface, this novel is the story of a short period of time after black slave owner Henry Townsend has died. He was thirty-one, married to a free woman named Caldonia, and they owned thirty-three slaves at the time of his death. Henry was born a slave, but his parents, Augustus and Mildred, worked hard to buy their own freedom and then Henry's freedom several years later. While they were free and Henry was not, he endeared himself to his owner, a man who had two families, one white and one with the love of his life, a slave. After Henry dies, there is unrest and some slaves disappear. This is the barest plot summary possible, because in actuality, the novel contains multitudes.

If you're looking for a novel that will make you care deeply for the characters, be enraged at the untenable practice of slavery, and think about the parallels of hypocrisy then and now to justify the unjustifiable, this might be the novel you need.

Set in antebellum Virginia, a former slave, Henry Townsend, owns fifty acres of land and thirty-three slaves. As the story opens, Townsend is dying. The novel chronicles his life, the lives of his family members, and the lives of people he encountered in the community.

The main characters are three-dimensional and feel like real people, with both admirable traits and flaws. Jones employs an omniscient narrator and non-linear storytelling. He weaves together overlapping stories of past and present events, such that the reader knows what happens to these people in the future before knowing what has happened to them in the book’s “present.” There are a great many characters in this book and the list of Dramatis Personae is helpful in keeping them all straight.

This novel is based on a lesser known historical fact. While it was not common, it did happen that some free blacks owned slaves. It lends a complexity to the slavery narrative – showing how people can be impacted by society’s strictures and how victims of exploitation could become perpetrators of the same system.

This is not a quick and easy read. It feels like being immersed in the life and times of Manchester County, Virginia, in the 1850s. It is an eloquently written condemnation of oppression in any form. This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004.

This book demands that you read it slowly and intently. Like eating a huge Thanksgiving dinner, you need to pause and digest before you have the next course. At the outset, the plot seems to be all over the place, bouncing from character to character, telling too many stories, not telling enough and then seeming to tell too much. Ah, but then, you make a little progress and the rhythm begins to assert itself, the stories begin to weave together, the minute details begin to become a diorama, the picture stops being a blur and comes into sharp focus. This isn’t one man’s story, or even the story of one place, this is the story of all men and this is the tale of a world.

This book is not so much about race as it is about the abject insanity and evil of the institution of slavery, wherever it is found, whoever is practicing it. In this system, there are free black masters holding black slaves, some of them well-meaning, but it does not make the practice any less immoral. There are white men who love their black mistresses and the children they bear, but it does not remove the fact that they hold a dominion over them that is not borne of love in any of its guises. There are also individuals who are victims of the system and others who refuse to be victims of the system, even at the cost of their lives.

I loved many of Jones’ characters, notably Augustus and Mildred Townsend. They exemplify what is the best in us. I felt sorry for some of them, like Sheriff John Skiffington, who would like to be better than this society allows him to be, and Caldonia Townsend’s brother, Calvin, who wishes to go to New York so that he will not have to bear witness to the cruelties around him, cruelties he must realized have escaped him only because of a trick of fortune. I despised some of them, and I recognized most of them. The petty and jealous, who must have dominion over someone to feel they have worth; the ungrateful and traitorous, who would turn upon a friend to put some silver in their own pockets; the meek and hopeless, who bow to the yoke and try simply to find a corner in which they are allowed to exist; the defiant and strong-minded, who fight with their last breath because to do otherwise is to prop up the indefensible; all are here.

What I loved most about this novel is its genuineness, its lack of exaggeration or hyperbole, where surely none is needed, its emphasis on the day-to-day injustice of an institution that is accepted as insurmountable or even correct only because it is what is. Edward P. Jones has leveled an attack at the heart of mankind and defied one to imagine what they would have done, what they would have dared to do, in such a place and time.

The Known World is a complex masterpiece about slavery and the moral complexities of slaves owning other slaves. Jones creates a world the reader can hear, smell, taste and know down to his marrow. Every one of the dozens of characters has a back story. Most characters have a future story as well, that may be revealed at any time regardless of the timeline of the story. Edward P. Jones, in an interview, said "...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."

It is difficult to keep track of the many characters, so know that your book may come with a character list, as mine did at the conclusion of the novel. It would have been a great help to me had I found it before I had strained my memory skills to the limit.

The Known World has won several prizes, including The Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2004.

The best book on race in America that I've read. Reading it made me feel and understand at least some of what slavery and race has done to America, more than any other book I've read has.

One passage stuck with me:

"So Patterson resigned, took himself back to that English town near the Scottish border where his people had lived for centuries. He spent all the rest of his years as a sheep farmer and became known as a good shepherd, 'a man born to it.'
... Whenever people in that part of the world asked Patterson about the wonders of America, the possibilities and the hope of America, Patterson would say that it was a good and fine place but all the Americans were running it into the ground and that it would be a far better place if it had no Americans."

DNF at 27%.

Il mondo conosciuto è un romanzo aspro sugli ultimi vagiti di un mondo sull’orlo del cambiamento. Ambientato principalmente nel 1855, in Virginia, qualche anno prima dello scoppio della Guerra di Secessione, racconta da angolature inedite la crudeltà della schiavitù.
Le vite di schiavi, di schiavi affrancati e di neri nati liberi.
Dalla critica viene spesso paragonato a Via col vento, confermando quanto la critica comprenda poco alcuni testi. In particolare Il mondo conosciuto nasconde i perni narrativi moderni, esplicitando un timbro apparentemente classico, che classico non è.

Edward P. Jones gioca sull’ambiguità della narrazione, in pieno stile post moderno, parodiando il genere della narrativa storica. Per fare ciò, mette in atto gli stessi fallimenti della Storia, che è raccontata dai vincitori, attraverso la manipolazione del tempo e l’utilizzo di fonti.

Le citazioni che a volte compaiono nel testo in realtà sono finzioni, che fondono un presente storico immaginario, quello del narratore onnisciente, con un passato storico immaginario.

Gli schiavi di Jones sono trattati come proprietà, a cui oltre che l’identità e la libertà, è negato il futuro. Attraverso la manipolazione temporale Jones restituisce l’avvenire e insiste sull'umanità.
L’artificio letterario risulta nascosto in una visione angolata resa da un tono distaccato, ma che in realtà è profondamente cosciente di quello che sta narrando.

Very complex themes and characters. Historical fiction set in virginia, era 1800's. The tale of former slaves being slave owners. Learned some facts, very fascinating. Draw back: hard to remenber all the characters and how they are inter-relate.

My well-read mother-in-law referred this one to me. Fascinating. Well written. A modern day Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Freed Blacks owning slaves turns many of the justifications for slavery on their head, from the inferior black man argument, to God’s disapproval of the race. Touching, depressing, exciting, I couldn’t put this one down. I have yet to reconcile my believe and patriotism in America with the despicable practice of slavery that endured for over 100 years. This is a topic that really intrigues me.

Very close to 4, but as good as it is, there was a bit lacking in it for me, to give it with a clean conscious 4 stars, regardless how acclaimed it is. More in my video review.