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Title details for Middle Passage by Charles Johnson - Available

Middle Passage

by Charles Johnson
Dion Graham
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
After the Confederacy falls, newly freed slave Rutherford Calhoun is eager to avoid marrying a prim schoolteacher and boards the first ship he finds moored at a New Orleans port. Unbeknownst to Calhoun, the vessel is a slave ship enroute to Africa. On the return trip, Calhoun is put to work as a cabin boy and quickly assists the newly captured slaves in revolting against the drunken crew. This compelling adventure is filled with a perfect blend of colorful narrative, historical romance and suspense.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 17, 2002

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781449883799
      • File size: 204375 KB
      • Duration: 07:05:46

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      To evade both the law and an insistent woman, a newly freed slave becomes a sailor. After the ship sets sail, he discovers he has signed onto a slave ship enroute to Africa to capture members of a legendary tribe. This is one of those unfortunate circumstances in which the novel itself is the cause for the audiobook's failure. The use of twentieth- century language in a novel taking place in the nineteenth century is jarring to the ear and disconcerting to the narrative flow. Even the expert tones of Dion Graham's narration can't keep this production afloat. P.R. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 5, 1990
      A savage parable of the black experience in America, Johnson's picaresque novel begins in 1830 when Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed Illinois slave eking out a living as a petty thief in New Orleans, hops aboard a square-rigger to evade the prim Boston schoolteacher who wants to marry him. But the Republic , no riverboat, turns out to be a slave clipper bound for Africa. Calhoun, a witty narrator conversant with the works of Chaucer and Beethoven and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, hates himself for acting as henchman to the ship's captain, a dwarfish, philosophizing tyrant. Before the rowdy, drunken crew can spring a mutiny, African slaves recently taken on board stage a successful revolt. Blending confessional, ship's log and adventure, the narrative interweaves a disquisition on slavery, poverty, race relations and an African worldview at odds with Western materialism. In luxuriant, intoxicating prose Johnson ( The Sorcerer's Apprentice ) makes the agonized past a prism looking onto a tense present.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 1, 1991
      Calhoun, a newly freed slave, accidentally boards a slave ship bound for Africa with a tyrannical, philosophizing captain and his rowdy, mutinous crew. ``Blending confessional, ship's log and adventure, the narrative interweaves a disquisition on slavery, poverty, race relations and an African worldview at odds with Western materialism,'' said PW of this National Book Award-winner . ``In luxuriant, intoxicating prose Johnson makes the agonized past a prism looking onto a tense present.''

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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