Twelve Years a Slave audiobook

This is an audiobook recording of Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup. It is the memoir of a freeborn African American from New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery. After being held for twelve years on a series of Louisiana plantations, he is eventually freed and reunited with his family. Solomon Northup published his memoir the year he was rescued. It is notable not only for its lucid description of plantation life, with detailed passages on the methods by which cotton and sugarcane were harvested and processed, and how slaves were fed, housed and punished, but also for the author’s evenhanded treatment of his subject: although he denounces slavery as an institution, Northup expresses his gratitude to the masters who treated him with gentleness and generosity, and shows a surprising ability to forgive even the most unimaginable cruelties.

