Now a major Hollywood film, winner of Best Picture at the 2014 Academy Awards, and directed by Steve McQueen – starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender and Benedict Cumberbatch. Northup’s meticulous first-hand recordings of slave life, written in conjunction with a white lawyer called David Wilson, provide a true-life testament to tremendous courage and resolve in the face of unspeakable injustice. Against all odds, Northup eventually manages to get word to his family – and the ensuing rescue from the drunken and sadistic Mr Epps and subsequent legal cases are no less shocking than the rest of the tale.
This moving and utterly brutal book is a harrowing account of his life in the sugar and cotton plantations of Louisiana, subject to varying degrees of savagery and abuse by a series of owners.
The extraordinary true story of Solomon Northup, a free African-American living in New York in 1841, who was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and subjected to unimaginable degradation and abuse until his rescue twelve years later. Paperback: 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup – fully illustrated 1853 edition
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