Equiano, the African

the long version

This definitive biography tells the story of the former slave Olaudah Equiano (1745??97), who in his day was the English-speaking world?s most renowned person of African descent. Equiano?s greatest legacy is his classic 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. A key document of the early movement to ban the slave trade, it includes the earliest known firsthand description by a slave of the horrific Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas. Equiano, the African is filled with fresh revelations about this many-sided figure?most notably that Equiano may have been born not in Africa, as he claimed, but in South Carolina."--Publisher website (October 2006).