Washington Black

A Novel

By: Esi Edugyan

Narrated by: Dion Graham

Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • “A gripping historical narrative exploring both the bounds of slavery and what it means to be truly free.” —Vanity Fair

Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human.

But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again.

©2018 Esi Edugyan (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Perfectly executed . . . Soaring . . . More than a tale of human bondage, it’s also an enthralling meditation on the weight of freedom, wrapped in a rousing adventure story stretching to the ends of the earth.” —Renée Graham, The Boston Globe

“Terrifically exciting . . . An engrossing hybrid of 19th-century adventure and contemporary subtlety, a rip-roaring tale of peril imbued with our most persistent strife . . . Discover what the rest of the world already knows: Edugyan is a magical writer.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Riveting . . . [A] towering achievement . . . Edugyan is one of our sharpest and deepest writers of historical fiction.” —David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly

Now what do I do?

This is one of those books that draw you in so completely, when you're finished, you feel lost. What will I do now? What can I possibly read -- listen to, that can equal this?

Beautifully written, beautifully read and totally engrossing. My only complaint is that it had to end. Dion Graham makes the story come to life. Highly recommend.

Unexpected but Remarkable

Magical realism is not quite the description that fits but it is close. Though written as a traditional story narrative, there was almost a fantasy quality to the events and characters. I found that I was willing to accept the unreal plot and appreciate the visual quality of the writing. Sometimes difficult. The book was worth the effort.

4.16 stars

Washington Black is the story of a young boy born into slavery and his everlasting struggle to escape. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and it’s good, though I enjoyed a couple others on the list maybe a little more. Regardless, it’s deserving of its recognition. Wash, the protagonist, takes the listener all across the globe in his perilous journeys. It’s a bit like an English version of the Underground Railroad. This was my third audiobook narrated by Dion Graham, and another excellent performance, though I thought his portrayal of crying was a bit over the top. All in all, it’s a solid audiobook.

Overall rating: 4.16 stars

A Genuine Masterpiece

We know from the opening moments that the perspective of a slave is one we could never imagine, when the child describes witnessing the death of his owner as “watching the dead go free.” So desperate is the slave experience that they share a belief that when they die, they will be returned to their ancestral homeland. No wonder they contemplate suicide, and sometimes accomplish it.

Dion Graham’s almost-whispering narration belies the nonstop unexpected drama that awaits an 11-year-old boy called Wash whose whole world in 1830 is a Barbados sugar plantation. That will soon change, beginning with a hot air balloon in a storm at sea, and a dead white man left behind.

The novel spans great lengths of time and even greater distances, through the eyes of a bewildered former slave with physical and emotional wounds, like a scarred Phileas Fogg with a cutthroat bounty-hunter on his tail. From the Caribbean to Virginia and the Underground Railroad, to the Arctic, Nova Scotia, London and Morocco, he encounters other damaged mortals in his travels, each flawed in their own unique ways.

Esi Edugyan wields brilliant, evocative prose with such descriptive power, and plot points you never see coming. It is history, science and travelogue, but none of those is an adequate description. It is an adventure, but also a kind of pilgrimage.

Near the end, in an African desert, a grown-up Washington Black rages at the benefactor who transformed his prospects and later abandoned him: “You are more concerned that slavery should be a moral stain upon white men, than by the actual damage it wreaks on black men!”

But the truth is even more complex than that, and more subtle.

Prepare to take a pause from everything and immerse yourselves Washington Black’s world.

His tale will enter your soul and send you to museums. I disengaged from my life to stay with the story.

A deep book set in an adventure story.

This is a book for which I had high hopes of a five star rating. I was thinking it would compare well to Whitehead's Underground Railroad. Perhaps unfairly, I thought the books would be quite similar -- both were fantastical journeys out of slavery, both were included on the Manbooker longlist for the years of their qualification. But really, the books are not the same story. I did like Whitehead's book more, but this one is deeper than many reviewers are noticing.

In Washington Black, Esi Edugyan gave us a young protagonist who is born into slavery, and whom we meet at about the age of 10. In the first part of the story we focus on meeting the characters. George Washington Black ("Wash") is a slave on a plantation in Barbados. He has no family, and is cared for primarily by a female field slave. Erasmus Wilde is the new manager/owner/master of the plantation, and his brother Christopher Wilde ("Titch") is a scientist and adventurer. Titch seems to be a free-thinker and a dreamer, who has followed in the footsteps of their father. Titch has built a hot air balloon and convinces Erasmus that Wash is the perfect manservant, due to his small size.

This is where our story changes. That focus on Wash's life in slavery and his relationships with other slaves changes to a story of adventure. Titch and his balloon take Wash to Africa with many stops along the way. Wash becomes an artist and illustrates Titch's work. Wash's life changes dramatically along the way, and when I chose to think beyond the YA feel of the adventure story I recognized the deeper meaning of this part had to do with the story of how a young man finds his own identity when he is held back by the world. Wash was never given the tools or the hope that he would ever have freedom to create his own place in the world. But Titch's balloon takes him out of slavery, and now Wash is finding his way despite the fact that the vengeful Erasmus placed a bond on his capture.

Ultimately the book is about more than slavery or even the abolitionist movement. It is about how we unite with people of color, how we can be allies. So when I reflect upon its similarities to, and differences from, The Underground Railroad it occurs to me that the author intended a different outcome. Whitehead used the structure of his novel to show all the varying horrors of slavery. Edugyan is using hers to tell the story of what happens to a man who is free for the first time and trying to recover from slavery.

Whaatt???

I guess I'm not smart enough or intellectual enough to get it (I'm not a total dunce, I read every moment I can get- hard with kids- I have a number of degrees including a doctorate)- I hate these books that just end, period- like I kept reversing because I thought I must not have been paying attention or the audio skipped or something. But no, the book just ended in the middle of nowhere with no resolution, explanation. Zip, nada. It was a lovely listen while it lasted, excellent narrator, interesting story, hints of supernatural, the emotional trauma. But all of it was for nothing. And, while very beautifully and painfully detailed in the beginning, I feel like the author got lazy about a a third of the way through- how exactly did Wash make his way throughout once he stopped working as a busser- or even though we witnessed the abuse that Wash faced as a presumptively free man, we got no look at how his interracial (at least as perceived by others) relationship with treated (even though her father knew, the public would have figured it out with them always together or him pushing her face into his chest to protect her from witnessing something traumatic). I hate having to rate the performance because I've discovered that rating the performance high will the give the book a higher star rating that is not warranted because who cares about the performance when the book is a rip off???

What a spectacularly disastrous effort

The first third of this novel seemed to be reasonably on track. Characters were developing nicely and the plot possessed an appealing. free-wheeling energy. But then the plot imploded, and I have to say that I've not witnessed such a spectacular breakdown in decades. In retrospect, the conception of the novel was fatally flawed; there was no way to make this work because Wash, himself, is not really a character; he's a prop.

The whole thing goes to hell in a handbag with the arrival of Tanna and her father who are apparently necessary for Edugyan to hammer home her underlying thematic purpose. Wash devolves into a dithering mute, unable to articulate, well, anything. All we get is "oh no, this guy's gonna be bad--no wait, no he isn't," a repetitive and tiresome device designed to create suspense. Fall for it once, shame the reader; after that, shame on the author. Absolutely no intellectual discourse takes place in a novel that's supposed to be about ideas. Bad men abound, Wash escapes, Tanna lectures, and Wash dithers. Indeed, Wash grows increasingly mute and inert, he seems to cease having a real presence in at crucial moments in the plot.

Another significant flaw in this novel is its misandry. Washington never becomes a fully dynamic man; instead, he remains a stunted man-child. In fact, all of the men in this novel are thusly drawn, incapable of understanding their own feelings and mystified by their own behaviors and motivations.

In short, the novel is little more than the author's political views on the empty but self-serving paternalism of abolitionism, an idea that may, indeed, have merit but one that deserves exploration through characters who are capable of actually debating ideas. Instead, what we get is a ham-fisted sermon via our MPDG whose wisdom will point out the error in their ways.

This author needs a good editor willing to correct her pacing, her tendency to repeat and reiterate, her formulaic piling on of ludicrous smells and textures, and her cringe-worthy contrivances and coincidences. After that, moving on to fully realized dynamic humans might then produce a novel worth our time and consideration.

Book of Wonders

This was a beautiful book. lt was sensitive and exciting at the same time. My only reservation was the accents attempted by the otherwise terrific narrator. Less is better with any accent.

Artful As An Epic Poem

If you crave listening to a grand epic, I cannot recommend Washington Black read by Dion Graham highly enough. Esi Edugyan's writing is meant to be read aloud.

I imagine this book becoming a classic, worthy of study and rereading. There are many great books appearing on the subject of slavery and post-slavery, but the subject matter here is unique in many ways. The sensibility of young Washington Black, our narrator, is artistic and analytic from an early age. It is through him that we see the world with its hierarchies of power, of some characters who want to hold on to power at any cost and disregard the lives of others. But he must be free to develop his potential and receive the recognition that every human deserves.

Meanwhile we experience all the elements of nature in beautiful or harsh intensity--earth, wind, fire, water. We journey with Washington Black from his birthplace as a slave in steamy Barbados in the early 1800s up the coast to frigid North America and eventually to Europe and North Africa.

Ultimately this is a story of the deep bonds of relationships that every human being craves. The human characters are as unique and amazingly complex as the species that Washington Black collects, draws, and prepares for exhibition. Without giving away the plot, I will mention only the Nova Scotia octopus and the Moroccan camel as two memorable minor "characters," which echo characters and themes in the human world.

I look forward to recommending this book to my Book Group and thinking deeply about the ending.

Washington Black

Overall a good read that kept me interested in what would happen next but quite depressing. The narrator is very good and brought an otherwise 3-star story to 4-star.