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Confessions of Nat Turner (Vintage Classic)
 
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Confessions of Nat Turner (Vintage Classic) (Paperback)

by William Styron (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Customers buy this book with The Fire Next Time: WITH My Dungeon Shook: My Dungeon Shook; Down at the Cross (Twentieth Century Classics) by James Baldwin

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Product details

  • Paperback: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (1 Jul 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099285568
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099285564
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 98,940 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #5 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > S > Styron, William

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Product Description

Product Description

In 1831 Nat Turner awaits death in a Virginia jail cell. He is a slave, a preacher, and the leader of the only effective slave revolt in the history of 'that peculiar institution'. William Styron's ambitious and stunningly accomplished novel is Turner's confession, made to his jailers under the duress of his God. Encompasses the betrayals, cruelties and humiliations that made up slavery - and that still sear the collective psyches of both races.


From the Publisher

A first-person narrative that depicts a good man's transformation into an avenging angel
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Customer Reviews

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Slavery breeds violence, violence breeds slavery., 10 Jan 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Confessions of Nat Turner (Modern Library) (Hardcover)
Written in 1968, Styron's "Confessions" delves deep into the psychology behind Nat Turner's 1831 slave revolt. Almost unbearable in its graphic violence and Biblically-dimensioned heartbreak, the novel (for it *is* fictional) has Turner telling the whole story in painfully honest detail. Styron neither defends Turner nor paints him as crazy; he is less interested in pointing out right or wrong than in trying to understand the broad ironies of the system of slavery and its effects on the people who ran it and were subject to it. Styron's Nat Turner is a man who is both educated and destroyed by his masters; he is both uplifted and misled by the Bible. His hatred is not fueled by the hatred of whites, but by the pity of whites. And when he kills, he is only able to commit one physical murder, though he takes responsibility for 60. The book is often painful to read, especially for one who might think that race relations today have little to do with 19th-century slavery. But in its wealth of detail and its ability to enter into the mind of a complex and criminal mind, it is unique, and should be required reading for every self-termed patriotic American.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, 6 May 2004
By Philippe Horak (Zug, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Confessions of Nat Turner (Paperback)
In August 1831, in a remote region of south-eastern Virginia, took place the only effective and sustained revolt in the history of American Negro slavery. That year, a black man, Nat Turner, awaits death in a prison cell. He is a slave, a preacher and the leader of the revolt. Mr Styron based his novel on the single significant contemporary document concerning this insurrection, namely a brief pamphlet of twenty pages called "The Confessions of Nat Turner", published in Richmond in 1831. The confession Turner made to his jailers under the duress of his God is a narrative describing a good man's transformation into an avenging angel even as it encompasses all the betrayals, cruelties and humiliations that made up slavery - and that is still present in the collective psyches of both races.
This magnificent book brilliantly depicts the American past in a dazzling narrative.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A passionate and serious novel, 11 Mar 2003
This review is from: The Confessions of Nat Turner (Paperback)
This book did something that few books do - it made me cry. I think my tears were the result of an immersion in the scene and characters of the novel (both of which are deeply and intensely drawn) and a general sense of frustration about the world that it should have such painful things in its history.

The hero of the novel, and the narrator of the story, is the leader of a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, Nat Turner. It is based on real historical events and Styron claimed to be trying to re-create 'a man and his era' . The novel accompanies Turner through each painful, ill-fated move leading up to his capture and a sad end.

I think this book is remarkable for its thick, richly drawn character development. It's passionate, grand, awful, very serious, all these words seem to fit. It's definitely not a light read, but I have gone on to read other William Styron books, and this still seems the strongest and my favourite.

Many people will take a familiar moral message about the iniquities of slavery away from the reading of this book, but Styron also called it a 'meditation on history'. The true story of Nat Turner from his own point of view is not one we will ever hear. We do have a short pamphlet entitled 'The Confessions of Nat Turner', claiming to be his words (a piece of propaganda probably created by the court which tried him) and we have Styron's masterly novel. Two stories, and the truth probably in neither.

If you wanted to find out more about the 'real life' stories of slaves in the pre-Civil War US, I would also heartily recommend The Narrative of Frederick Douglas or Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl. I found these quite fascinating and powerful in a different way.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A unique book which takes you into the soul of a slave.
This work, steeped in accurate historical settings and moving religious allegories, takes the reader into the very core of a southern slave.
Published on 22 Mar 1997

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