by Esi Edugyan
First published 2018
Eleven-year-old Washington Black toils in the cane fields of a Barbados sugar plantation. He expects only brutality when his master's brother Christopher Wilde selects him as a personal servant. Instead, Wash discovers that Titch is a scientist and abolitionist who introduces him to flying machines and treats him as an equal. Their unlikely bond grows until violence forces them to flee. Titch abandons his comfortable life to save Wash from bounty hunters. They escape along America's eastern seaboard and eventually reach the Arctic wilderness. When Titch disappears, Wash must survive alone and reinvent himself. His journey spans continents as he searches for belonging in a world that sees him as property. Edugyan traces one boy's transformation from field slave to free man, exploring how friendship can transcend the deepest social divisions and asking what it truly means to be free.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, 19th-century, african-american-historical-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Barbados, America, Arctic
Period: 19th-century
334 pages · Hardcover · Knopf
Content warnings: slavery, violence