From Steve McQueen the critically acclaimed director of Shame comes a film adaptation of
Solomon Northup's bestselling memoir 12 Years a Slave a vivid and detailed account of his
twelve-year enslavement on a series of Louisiana cotton plantations in the mid-1800s. Coming to
theaters nationwide from Fox Searchlight this October this highly anticipated film is expected
to be a big awards contender for 2013 and will lead an entirely new audience to read Northup¿s
vivid masterpiece. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Chiwetel Ejiofor Michael
Fassbender Benedict Cumberbatch Paul Dano Paul Giamatti Lupita Nyong'o Sarah Paulson Brad
Pitt and Alfre Woodard this tie-in edition features a foreword from acclaimed director Steve
McQueen. Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives Twelve Years a Slave is a
harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon
Northup born a free man in New York was lured to Washington D.C. in 1841 with the promise
of fast money then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of
his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation.After his rescue Northup published this
exceptionally vivid and detailed account of slave life. It became an immediate bestseller and
today is recognized for its unusual insight and eloquence as one of the very few portraits of
American slavery produced by someone as educated as Solomon Northup or by someone with the
dual perspective of having been both a free man and a slave.
