Description:
Africa, 1830. Atar Gull, a strapping young slave, finds himself on a certain Captain Benoît's ship, on his way to the West Indies to be sold. This is no ordinary slave. He is the son of one of the great tribal kings, an athlete, a warrior. He will come at a high price, and not just in terms of money. After a long, unimaginably tough trip, Atar Gull winds up in Jamaica in the service of a plantation owner. It is with this plantation owner that his tragic destiny is entwined. This is a staggering adventure narrated through a superb 88-page volume that will be sure to haunt you long after you've turned the last page.
My thoughts:
This story is haunting because I am not sure if there is a hero. Perhaps slavery narratives have no heroes. Perhaps moral centers cannot come from amoral situations.
I don't want to spoil the story but this kind of haunting is similar to the real actions turned into fiction in Toni Morrison's book Beloved. Margaret Garner, the real slave who becomes Sethe in the fictionalized novel, fled from Kentucky to the free state of Ohio in 1856. When she was set upon by slave catchers, she chose to kill her own child instead of allowing the slave holders to enslave and possibly sell her child. It is this same kind of psychological horror that is part of the slave narrative in Atar Gull as well as in Beloved. Perhaps not before 8th grade.
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