Esi Edugyan · 2018 · global

Esi Edugyan's 2018 novel. Washington Black, an eleven-year-old enslaved boy on a Barbados sugar plantation, becomes the assistant of his master's eccentric brother and escapes with him aboard a flying machine. So begins an odyssey across the world - to the frozen Arctic, to Nova Scotia, London and the deserts of Morocco - as Wash, a gifted naturalist, searches for freedom, belonging and the meaning of his own life.

1. 1
   Barbados

   The brutal sugar plantation where the boy Washington Black is enslaved, until the master's inventor brother Titch takes him on as an assistant - and they flee together in a flying 'Cloud-cutter.'

2. 2
   The Arctic

   The frozen North to which their flight and Titch's restless science lead them, where Titch abandons Wash and vanishes into the ice, leaving the boy alone and free but adrift.

3. 3
   Nova Scotia

   The Canadian coast where Wash builds a new life, discovers his gift for marine science, and falls in love - always shadowed by the bounty hunter on his trail and the question of who he is.

4. 4
   London

   The city where Wash's talents help create a pioneering public aquarium, and where he confronts the legacy of the men who owned and shaped him.

5. 5
   Morocco

   The Moroccan desert where Wash's long search for Titch and for the truth of his own freedom reaches its restless, open-ended end.