Esi Edugyan

Increasingly (about half-way through) Esi Edugyan's 2018 novel, Washington Black, is an adventure story more than a sociopolitical expose about conditions of slavery - though this novel rises well above the expectations of the adventure genre for a number of reasons. First, it is grounded in the tradition of escape from bondage, and EE has a lot of knowledge about the horrid conditions of life on a sugar plantation ca 1830, giving this novel a significant historical component. Second, she gives real insight into the mind and sensibility of young boy in slavery through the many perceptions of her eponymous narrator, who is always wary about what he might express and always attuned to the dangers he faces, in particular dangers the even sympathetic white men cannot recognize. Third, the novel is nuanced, as the whites are not uniformly racist - though even the sympathetic whites cannot fully escape the limitations of their time and their status. Fourth, the novel is riotously inventive - with totally improbable incidents - the balloon flight through a storm, for example, told with spirit and panache almost making is believe in the impossible. Fifth, EE knows how to maintain narrative tension: Wash and his protector, Titch (?), are not just wanderers but are in ever-present danger, w slave-catchers on the lookout and a large bounty on their heads. Sixth, her writing is fantastic throughout, both in subtleties of dialogue that reveal character and personality and in terrific, sometimes Dickensian, set pieces such as a description of the Norfolk docks, the suicide of the plantation-owner's cousin, and the crash landing aboard a Virginia-bound ship.

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