Ian Thomson

Surviving the Middle Passage

The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill

issue 21 February 2009

The Book of Negroes, an historical romance, creates an unforgettably vivid picture of the Atlantic slave trade and the philanthropists who sought to oppose it. The novel opens in Africa in the year 1745. Aminata Diallo, a midwife’s daughter, has been abducted from her village in present-day Mali and marched in chains to a slave ship, where she is sold to white traders.

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