Collection
Description
Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is persistently haunted by the ghost of her dead baby girl.
Media reviews
As a record of white brutality mitigated by rare acts of decency and compassion, and as a testament to the courageous lives of a tormented people, this novel is a milestone in the chronicling of the black experience in America. It is Morrison writing at the height of her considerable powers, and it
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Morrison traces the shifting shapes of suffering and mythic accommodations, through the shell of psychosis to the core of a victim's dark violence, with a lyrical insistence and a clear sense of the time when a beleaguered peoples' "only grace...was the grace they could imagine."
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — Fiction — 1987)
Pulitzer Prize (Winner — Fiction — 1988)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Fiction — 1987)
American Book Award (1988)
Robert F. Kennedy Book Award (Winner — 1988)
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (1988)
Prometheus Award (Nominee — Novel — 1988)
Nobel Prize in Literature (1993)
The Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
Notable Books List (1987)
ALA Outstanding Books for the College Bound (Fiction — 1999)
Waterstones Books of the Century (36 — 1997)
Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List (20 — 2009)
The Great American Novels (1987)
Language
Original publication date
1987