REVIEW: The Known World by Edward P. Jones
An interesting novel both for its post-modernist style of narrative and its subject matter. The latter is a little-discussed point in American History—that many blacks owned black slaves (In the 1860s, 28% of free blacks owned slaves compared to 4.8% of whites). Thus the subjects of life as a slave, freed slaves, and slave-owners (white and black) are woven throughout. The style may make some feel the novel is disjointed, as it jumps around from character to character, and even back and forth in time (sometimes even adding a brief sentence or two about what some character’s descendent said to someone a century later).
