Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick Press, 2006) is the first in a a two-volume series available through the library.

The story is set on the North American continent just before the American Revolution.

The lead character is a slave who receives a classical education, not knowing he is the subject of an experiment to gauge the capacities of his race and not knowing that society considers him to be another man’s property.

The book sheds an interesting light on a paradox of U.S. history: that while some settlers pursued freedom from the British crown, they were determined to keep their fellow human beings as property.

Originally posted to the Facebook page of the Lake County Library

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