Discover Toni Morrison’s most iconic work in this Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exemplifies her powerful and important place in contemporary American literature.
‘An American masterpiece’ AS Byatt
It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her love. Told with heart-stopping clarity, melding horror and beauty, Beloved is Toni Morrison’s enduring masterpiece.
‘Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours...“Beloved,” is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all’ Margaret Atwood, New York Times
‘The literary titan we must never stop learning from’ Metro
Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction
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In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved.
A dead child, a runaway slave, a terrible secret--these are the central concerns of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved. Morrison, a Nobel laureate, has written many fine novels, including Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Paradise--but Beloved is arguably her best. To modern readers, antebellum slavery is a subject so familiar that it is almost impossible to render its horrors in a way that seems neither clichéd nor melodramatic. Rapes, beatings, murders, and mutilations are recounted here, but they belong to characters so precisely drawn that the tragedy remains individual, terrifying to us because it is terrifying to the sufferer. And Morrison is master of the telling detail: in the bit, for example, a punishing piece of headgear used to discipline recalcitrant slaves, she manages to encapsulate all of slavery's many cruelties into one apt symbol--a device that deprives its wearer of speech. "Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye." Most importantly, the language here, while often lyrical, is never overheated. Even as she recalls the cruelties visited upon her while a slave, Sethe is evocative without being overemotional: "Add my husband to it, watching, above me in the loft--hiding close by--the one place he thought no one would look for him, looking down on what I couldn't look at at all. And not stopping them--looking and letting it happen.... And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now." Even the supernatural is treated as an ordinary fact of life: "Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby," comments Sethe's mother-in-law.
Beloved is a dense, complex novel that yields up its secrets one by one. As Morrison takes us deeper into Sethe's history and her memories, the horrifying circumstances of her baby's death start to make terrible sense. And as past meets present in the shape of a mysterious young woman about the same age as Sethe's daughter would have been, the narrative builds inexorably to its powerful, painful conclusion. Beloved may well be the defining novel of slavery in America, the one that all others will be measured by. --Alix Wilber
"[Beloved] has left the realm of fiction and become a force of nature" (Guardian)
"A magnificent achievement...an American masterpiece" (A.S. Byatt Guardian)
"A triumph" (Margaret Atwood New York Times Book Review)
"She melds horror and beauty in a story that will disturb the mind forever" (Sunday Times)
"Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature" (New York Review of Books)
"A work of genuine force. . .Beautifully written" (Washington Post)
"There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you" (The New Yorker)
"Superb. . .A profound and shattering story that carries the weight of history. . .Exquisitely told" (Cosmopolitan)
"This is a wonderful novel about slavery, freedom, parental loss and revenants" (The Week, Thomas Keneally)
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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home, the farm where she was kept as a slave. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, she is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, Beloved. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrisons enduring masterpiece and best-known work. Dazzling. . . Magical. . . An extraordinary work New York Times Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours Beloved is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all Margaret Atwood An American masterpiece A. S. Byatt WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE **One of the BBCs 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001571610
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Softcover. Condition: Good. Terrible, unspeakable things happened to Sethe at Sweet Home, the farm where she lived as a slave for so many years until she escaped to Ohio. Her new life is full of hope but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe's new home is not only haunted by the memories of her past but also by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Seller Inventory # SONG0099511657
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