NewMexiKen read Edward P. Jones’s The Known World this past week. The novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize and that The Washington Post‘s Jonathan Yardley called “the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years” is — obviously — excellent and I highly recommend it. It’s available in soft cover.
Set in Virginia in the decades before the Civil War, the novel’s primary characters are members of the extended Townsend family, including slaves owned by the freed-Black Townsends. This mix makes for a rich and complex tapestry of racial-relations — black, mulatto, white and Indian. Indeed, more than any one individual, it is slavery that is the main character. As Yardley wrote:
More than anything else, Jones is concerned with the relationship between master and slave, and with the wholly unexpected permutations this acquires when both master and slave are black. Jones cuts right to the core when he writes: “Henry had always said that he wanted to be a better master than any white man he had ever known. He did not understand that the kind of world he wanted to create was doomed before he had even spoken the first syllable of the word master.” A master is a master is a master, and it doesn’t matter whether the master is white or black.