Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

It begins on a brutal cane plantation in Barbados in 1830. Washington Black, a slave boy of ten or so, watches his new master arrive – ‘an uncooked pallor to his skin’ – to assume responsibility for his late uncle’s estate. An extraordinary series of events follows, as Christopher ‘Titch’ Wilde, the new master’s brother, selects Washington as his personal servant – he is the right size to act as ballast in Titch’s aerial machine, the Cloud Cutter.

Titch is an eccentric naturalist, scientist, and inventor, and he treats and trains Washington as if he were an English boy, not a slave. Catastrophe follows, forcing them to escape the plantation, and the intrepid adventures of this novel take off. Washington’s journey propels him from the wastes of the Canadian Arctic to the begrimed streets of London, and on to the desert storms of Morocco. At first, he is driven by the fear of being caught, then out of desire to piece together his broken history.

There’s a cliff-hanger speed to the plot, which ties the reader from one chapter into the next. At times this makes the precise, finely worked details of Edugyan’s prose easy to miss – when we’re desperate to know who’s done what, we don’t care about the colour of the soft furnishings. Nonetheless, Edugyan spins a grand tale, bringing Washington’s psychology to the fore. These are not wild adventures in pursuit of some lost ark, but for a semblance of closure in a life of abandonment and brutality. She explores with deft skill the damage done to a slave’s mind and the persistent workings of white privilege on the road to abolition. 

Serpent's Tail, 30 Aug, £14.99