I recently read this amazing, surprising book. It is the 18th-century memoir of a remarkable man taken from Africa as a boy and sold into slavery. Africa and the family he lost, the nightmare of the passage and of plantation work, the differences in status for a slave in the West Indies, in England and Georgia and Philadelphia–and then a kind of sea faring adventure story, too. I had never heard of it, but I gather it is something of a classic, and I see why. It is so idiosyncratic, so beautifully written, so horrifying, and so exciting all at the same time.
The black and white is him. The color picture is probably not him, though it was used on the copy of the book I read. I included it because it’s so beautiful.

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