num_pages: 324
description: In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved.  A dead child, a runaway slave, a terrible secret--these are the central concerns of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved.Beloved is a dense, complex novel that yields up its secrets one by one. As Morrison takes us deeper into Sethe's history and her memories, the horrifying circumstances of her baby's death start to make terrible sense. And as past meets present in the shape of a mysterious young woman about the same age as Sethe's daughter would have been, the narrative builds inexorably to its powerful, painful conclusion. Beloved may well be the defining novel of slavery in America, the one that all others will be measured by. --Alix Wilber
language: English
title: Beloved
titlecomplete: Beloved
characters: Paul D, Denver, Sixo, Beloved, Baby Suggs, Halle, Schoolteacher, Sethe, Stamp Paid
genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, African American, Classics, Historical, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels, School
ratings_count: 417476
places: Kentucky, The United States of America, Ohio
series: Beloved Trilogy
awards: awardedAt: 568022400000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 568022400000
name: American Book Award, awardedAt: 568022400000
name: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, awardedAt: 536486400000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 568022400000
name: Frederic G. Melcher Book Award, awardedAt: 536486400000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction
publisher: Vintage