The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
by Olaudah Equiano
First dispatch from the slave trade. He survived.
For you if
you want to understand the Atlantic slave trade as a human experience rather than a historical abstraction
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Equiano was born Igbo in what is now Nigeria, enslaved as a child, transported across the Atlantic, sold multiple times, and eventually bought his own freedom. He published his autobiography in 1789 and it became a foundational text of the abolitionist movement. The first book in the African literary tradition in English. The most important dispatch from inside the Middle Passage ever written — not history looking back but a man telling you what it was like from inside it, in his own words, while the trade was still happening.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Nigeria • Europe
- Voice
- Written by a Nigerian author
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