Either way this does not detract from the account. Some have questioned whether Equiano was born in Africa or in North America due to some conflicting records. I understand that his purchase as a slave and travels as a seaman are so well documented from contemporaneous ships records etc that there is no disagreement on its truthfulness. The word incredible came to mind so often that I looked up some critiques of the book. It is well read with appropriate intonation and in-keeping with the authors underplaying of the extraordinary events. I would consider this essential reading for all seeking to understand Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and the realities of slavery in the West Indies. As a primary source it authoritatively reveals the micro and macro pictures. His only major work, The Interesting Narrative of the. With its descriptions of life among the Igbo and the author’s. Written by Himself is a slave narrative in which the author recounts his childhood, capture, life as an enslaved person, and emancipation. The prose is beautiful, the arguments passionate, clear and gracious. He moved to London and, in later life, became an author and campaigned to abolish the British slave trade. Originally published in 1789, Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. It reads like a cross between Hornblower and 12 years a slave, giving a personal account of the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, the trials of being a freed man, the surprisingly globalised and interconnected trading of the 18th century and by implication Britain’s gain from slavery. This is an incredibly gripping account of one extraordinary man’s life from childhood in west Africa, enslavement, freedom, coming to a personal faith in Jesus and abolitionist.
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