Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

I really loved this book, which was short listed for the Booker Prize this year, and one of the New York Times five best works of fiction.  The book is an engrossing hybrid of 19th-century adventure and contemporary subtlety, a rip-roaring tale of peril imbued with our most persistent strife.

The story is written as a memoir written by a former slave named George Washington Black, an ironic appellation that pricks at the festering wound in American mythology. When we first meet Wash  he’s about 11 years old, working on the Faith Plantation in Barbados. His master is shockingly cruel, even by the standards of Caribbean slavery. But when the master’s brother visits from England, Wash meets a white man who seems created from some wholly alien material.  He is a scientist who enlists Wash's help in his experiments, and discovers that Wash is very good at drawing.  It is a skill that makes him valuable to the brother, and eventually leads to his freedom.  A different take on the slave story and engrossing to the end.