A young slave boy is named and numbered 47 on a nineteenth-century Georgia plantation and encounters the brutality and injustice of the system of slavery.
47 meets a strange being named Tall John who appears to be another slave boy - a runaway. But as 47 comes to realise, John is an extraterrestrial visitor who believes that his destiny is intertwined with the young slave's.
Tall John is a science fiction creation but he is also a reinterpretation of High John the Conqueror - a character taken from old slave myths about a spirit come from Africa to confound the slave masters and (ultimately) to free all slaves.
| ISBN: | 9780316016353 |
| Publication date: | 30th November 2006 |
| Author: | Walter Mosley |
| Publisher: | Little, Brown and Company an imprint of Little, Brown |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 232 pages |
| Genres: |
Children’s / Teenage fiction: General, modern and contemporary fiction |