Twelve years a slave
By: Solomon Northup
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2014
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780141393827
Subjects: Slavery Louisiana History 19th century; African Americans; Slavery; Plantation life; African Americans Biography; Slaves United States Biography; Northup, Solomon, 1808-1863?; Plantation life Louisiana History 19th century; Slaves' writing, American; Slaves' writings, American; Northup, Solomon, 1808-; Slaves; Biography; History
Description: A tie-in edition of this eloquent and powerful memoir, to accompany the major new film starring Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation.
Notes: Film tie-in.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Film tie-in.; title: -Includes bibliographical references and index.-This is an official tie-in edition of this eloquent and powerful memoir, to accompany Steve McQueen's major new film starring Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Quvenzhane Wallis. Solomon Northup is a free man, living in New York. Then he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Drugged, beaten, given a new name and transported away from his wife and children to a Louisiana cotton plantation, Solomon will die if he reveals his true identity. This is the searing true story of his twelve years as a slave: the endless brutality, daily humiliations and constant fear, but also the small ways in which he and his fellow men try to survive. Twelve Years a Slave is a unique, unflinching record of slavery from the inside, and the incredible account of one man whose life was ripped from him and who fought to get it back. A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's many thousands gone who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation . (Saturday Review). I could not believe that I had never heard of this book. It felt as important as Anne Frank's diary, only published nearly a hundred years before . (Steve McQueen). Solomon Northup was a free man kidnapped into slavery in Washington, D.C. in 1841. Shortly after his escape, he published his memoirs to great acclaim and brought legal action against his abductors, though they were never prosecuted. The details of his life thereafter are unknown, but he is believed to have died in Glen Falls, New York, around 1863.