num_pages: 196
description: Valerie Martin’s Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery’s venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress.Exploring the permutations of Manon’s own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.From the Trade Paperback edition.
language: English
title: Property
titlecomplete: Property
genres: Historical, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction, Literature, Race, African American, Adult, The United States Of America, Fiction
ratings_count: 5562
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction
publisher: Vintage