Sharon Dogar, April 2011 Guest Editor: "I read this as we drove across the US in 1991. As the American landscape unfolded in front of me, a particular part of its history, that of slavery, unfolded within the narrative of this novel. I love the mysteriousness of the girl with the ‘tree’ on her back, I love the inventiveness of the plotting, the sheer poetry of the language, and the heartbreaking beauty of its telling. This book is a work of genius, and has that rare quality of a timeless telling."
Terrible, unspeakable things happened to Sethe at Sweet Home, the farm where she lived as a slave for so many years until she escaped to Ohio. Her new life is full of hope but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe's new home is not only haunted by the memories of her past but also by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of many novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), Paradise and Love. She has also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction.
