The Confessions of Nat Turner - Softcover

Styron, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553146688 ISBN 13: 9780553146684

Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1981

Synopsis

In 1831 Nat Turner awaits death in a Virginia jail cell. He is a slave, a preacher, and the leader of the only effective slave revolt in the history of 'that peculiar institution'. William Styron's ambitious and stunningly accomplished novel is Turner's confession, made to his jailers under the duress of his God. Encompasses the betrayals, cruelties and humiliations that made up slavery - and that still sear the collective psyches of both races.

About this title

From the Publisher:

12 1.5-hour cassettes

From the Inside Flap:

In the late summer of 1831, in a remote section of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery...

The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner, an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution. The compelling story ranges over the whole of Nat's Life, reaching its inevitable and shattering climax that bloody day in August.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is not only a masterpiece of storytelling; is also reveals in unforgettable human terms the agonizing essence of Negro slavery. Through the mind of a slave, Willie Styron has re-created a catastrophic event, and dramatized the intermingled miseries, frustrations--and hopes--which caused this extraordinary black man to rise up out of the early mists of our history and strike down those who held his people in bondage.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0553146688
• ISBN 13: 9780553146684
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1