“Brutal, heartbreaking and beautiful.

” Tanith

“Beloved is one of the greatest novels ever written – in any

language or culture, any genre or generation, any time or
clime. It is a measure of Morrison’s rare and remarkable gift
as a writer that one can say of this innovative novel: all
humanity is here. It is the most extraordinary excavation of
the bones and ghosts of American history (slavery, lynching,
Jim Crow segregation), limned in a deeply haunting, profoundly
moving multi-layered epic tragedy. With compelling candour,
courage and conviction, Morrison’s imperishable masterpiece
distils an eerie evocation of mood, setting, landscape and
atmosphere, a complex, even complicated deployment of character
and characterisation, multiple points of view from an interlude
of astutely individuated voices. [...] Toni Morrison’s Beloved
is, as TS Eliot wrote of James Joyce’s Ulysses, ‘a book to
which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can
escape.’” Idowu Omoyele

“This novel is important to English literature in three

respects. Firstly, it not only broaches a significant
historical topic (American slavery), but in many ways
prescribes solutions to our treatment of slavery’s history. The
novel also uses a beautiful and poetic style to hone in its
themes. Lastly, Morrison utilises magical realism to enhance
the setting and the characters that occupy it. Morrison is one
of the first American authors to use magical realism as a
primary stylistic choice.” Sean Fortenberry