num_pages: 324
description: Toni Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel--first published in 1987-- brought the unimaginable experience of slavery into the literature of our time and into our comprehension. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked her life in order to wrench herself from a living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad. Sethe, who now lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing apparition who calls herself Beloved.Sethe works at "beating back the past," but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly: in her memory; in Denver's fear of the world outside the house; in the sadness that consumes Baby Suggs; in the arrival of Paul D, a fellow former slave; and, most powerfully, in Beloved, whose childhood belongs to the hideous logic of slavery and who has now come from the "place over there" to claim retribution for what she lost and for what was taken from her. Sethe's struggle to keep Beloved from gaining possession of her present--and to throw off the long-dark legacy of her past--is at the center of this spellbinding novel. But it also moves beyond its particulars, combining imagination and the vision of legend with the unassailable truths of history.Upon the original publication of Beloved, John Leonard wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "I can't imagine American literature without it." In fact, more than a decade later, it remains a preeminent novel of our time, speaking with timeless clarity and power to our experience as a nation with a past of both abominable and ennobling circumstance.
language: English
title: Beloved
titlecomplete: Beloved
characters: Halle, Paul D, Schoolteacher, Denver, Sixo, Baby Suggs, Stamp Paid, Beloved, Sethe
genres: Literature, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism, African American, Novels, Historical, Fiction, Classics, School, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 417680
places: The United States of America, Ohio, Kentucky
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: Alfred A. Knopf