Twelve Years a Slave (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions)

“In a stunning reversal of stereotype, he is often a man among beasts.”

—Eric Ashley Hairston, from the Introduction

Twelve Years a Slave, a chronicle of the amazing ordeal of Solomon Northup, a free African American kidnapped in the North and impressed into slavery in Louisiana, is one of the most compelling and detailed slave narratives in existence. “There must have been some misapprehension—some unfortunate mistake,” writes Northup. “It could not be that a free citizen of New York, wh...