The Known World
Edward P. JonesFrom Edward P. Jones comes one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory—winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Edward P. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.
“A masterpiece that deserves a place in the American literary canon.”— Time
"One of the best black writers in the country — albeit one of the stingiest when it comes to publication — Jones takes on the subject of slavery in a long, deep book clearly born of much pondering and major ambition ...a panorama of slavery in the American South and the particularities of how this so-called peculiar institution was lived." - Alan Cheuse, The San Francisco Chronicle
Edward P. Jones has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for The Known World. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004, and his first collection of short stories, Lost in the City, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. His most recent collection, All Aunt Hagar's Children, has become a bestseller.