Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave

Abducted from Africa, sold in America.

“A deeply affecting record of an extraordinary life”- Daily Telegraph

A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker.

The true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade.

In August 1931, famed anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston travelled to Alabama to visit ninety-year-old Cudjo Lewis, a former slave.

Over three months, Cudjo shared heart-rending memories of his childhood in Africa; the horrors of being captured – fifty years after slavery was outlawed – and held in the Ouidah barracoons for selection by American slavers; the harrowing ordeal of the Middle Passage aboard the Clotilda with over one hundred other souls; and the years he spent in slavery.

Barracoon brings to life Cudjo’s singular voice in an invaluable contribution to history and culture, a work as poignant as it is profound.