Esi Edugyan, “Washington Black”

From the author of the award-winning “Half-Blood Blues” comes a dazzling new novel, about a boy who rises from the ashes of slavery to become a free man of the world. Washington Black is an 11-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born. When his master’s eccentric brother, Titch, chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. A naturalist, explorer, and abolitionist, Titch initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human; and where a boy born in chains can embrace a life of dignity and meaning.