One of the TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR New York Times Book Review One of the Best Books of the
Year The Boston Globe ● The Washington Post ● Time ● Entertainment Weekly ● San Francisco
Chronicle ● Financial Times ● Minneapolis Star Tribune ● NPR ● The Economist ● Bustle ● The
Dallas Morning News ● Slate ● Kirkus Reviews Eleven-year-old George Washington Black-or Wash-a
field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation is initially terrified when he is chosen as the
manservant of his master's brother. To his surprise however the eccentric Christopher Wilde
turns out to be a naturalist explorer inventor and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into
a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky where even a boy born in chains
may embrace a life of dignity and meaning and where two people separated by an impossible
divide can begin to see each other as human. But when a man is killed and a bounty is
placed on Wash's head they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their
travels what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart propelling Wash ever
farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far
North London to Morocco Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal of love
and redemption and of a world destroyed and made whole again.
