The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings

Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative recounts his kidnapping in Africa at the age of 11, his service as the slave of an officer in the British Navy, and his years of labour on slave ships until he was able to purchase his freedom in 1766. As a free man on a Central American plantation, he supervised slaves; increasingly disgusted by his co-workers, he returned to England in 1777. In England he worked for the resettlement of blacks in Sierra Leone, married an Englishwoman, and became a leading and respected figure in the anti-slaver movement. An autobiography, a tale of spiritual quest and fulfilment, a treatise on religion, politics and economics, The Interesting Narrative is a work of enduring literary and historical value.