The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African

Olaudah Equiano tells the true story of his life: kidnapped as a child in West Africa, sold into slavery, carried across the Atlantic in the horrors of the Middle Passage, and eventually buying his own freedom to become a leading voice against the slave trade. Vivid, intelligent, and deeply moving, his account exposes the cruelty of slavery while charting an extraordinary journey across continents. Published in 1789, it became a best-seller and a powerful weapon for the British abolitionist movement. It endures as one of the earliest and most important works by an African writer and a landmark of the literature of freedom.