Barracoon

Abducted from Africa, sold in America. "A deeply affecting record of an extraordinary life"- Daily Telegraph A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker. The true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade. In August 1931, famed anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston travelled to Alabama to visit ninety-year-old Cudjo Lewis, a former slave. Over three months, Cudjo shared heart-rending memories of his childhood in Africa; the horrors of being captured - fifty years after slavery was outlawed - and held in the Ouidah barracoons for selection by American slavers; the harrowing ordeal of the Middle Passage aboard the Clotilda with over one hundred other souls; and the years he spent in slavery. Barracoon brings to life Cudjo's singular voice in an invaluable contribution to history and culture, a work as poignant as it is profound.

Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, was deemed "one of the greatest writers of our time" by Toni Morrison. With the publication of Lies and Other Tall Tales, The Skill Talks Back, and What's the Hurry, Fox? new generations will be introduced to Hurston's legacy. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, in 1891, and died in 1960.