One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, The Known Worldis a daring and ambitious work by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones.
The Known Worldtells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, cant uphold the estates order, and chaos ensues. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.
Annotation
Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Winner of the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
Finalist for the 2003 National Book Award for Fiction.
Editorial Reviews
The bizarre world of American slavery has been the subject of much fiction, some of it uncommonly good, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to William Faulkner to Toni Morrison. This extraordinary novel -- the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years -- takes as its subject one of the most peculiar anomalies of that endlessly provocative and troubling subject: In the antebellum South, where whites systematically enslaved blacks, there were free blacks who themselves owned black slaves. ? Jonathan Yardley
About The Author:
Edward P. Jones grew up in Washington, D.C., where his mother worked as a dishwasher and hotel maid to support Jones and his brother and sister. Though she couldnt read or write herself, Joness mother encouraged her son to study, and eventually a Jesuit priest who knew Jones suggested he apply for a scholarship at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. There, Jones discovered the odd fact that in the antebellum South, there had been free black people who owned black slaves.
""It was a shock that there were black people who would take part in a system like that,"" he later told a Boston Globeinterviewer. ""Why didnt they know better?"" That question stayed with Jones for more than 20 years and would eventually inspire his first novel, The Known World.
After graduating from Holy Cross with a degree in English, Jones moved back to Washington, D.C., and began writing short stories, aiming to create a portrait of his city in the mode of James Joyces Dubliners. He attended writing seminars, then earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Virginia, but he felt that neither writing nor teaching was a reliable enough source of income. He took a day job as a business writer for an Arlington, Virgina, nonprofit, and held it for almost 19 years -- during which he published his first short-story collection, Lost in the City, which was nominated for a National Book Award. He also began planning his first novel, composing and revising chapters entirely in his head. Jones had just taken a five-week vacation to start writing the book when he found out he was being laid off, so he lived on severance pay and unemployment during the few months it took him to finish his first draft.
The Known Worldwas published in 2003, 11 years after Lost in the City. ""With hard-won wisdom and hugely effective understatement, Mr. Jones explores the unsettling, contradiction-prone world of a Virginia slaveholder who happens to be black,"" wrote Janet Maslin in The New York Times Book Review. Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post Book Worldcalled the book ""the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years.""
Though some reviewers have praised the authors impressive research, Jones insists he made almost everything up. During the 10 years he spent thinking about his novel, he accumulated shelves full of books about slavery, but ultimately he read none of them, choosing >The Known WorldJones Edward PAPaper BackTAD9780060557553