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Books

The burden of freedom: Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan, reviewed

15 September 2018

9:00 AM

15 September 2018

9:00 AM

It’s 1830, and among the sugar cane of Faith Plantation in Barbados, suicide seems like the only way out. Decapitations and burnings are performed with languorous cruelty. Women give birth and are sent straight back to work after lying their ‘tender-skinned newborns down in the furrows to wail against the hot sun’.

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