Zusatztext I could not believe that I had never heard of this book. It felt as important as Anne Frank's Diary! only published nearly a hundred years before. . . . The book blew [my] mind: the epic range! the details! the adventure! the horror! and the humanity. . . . I hope my film can play a part in drawing attention to this important book of courage. Solomon's bravery and life deserve nothing less. Steve McQueen! director of 12 Years a Slave! from the Foreword Frightening! gripping and inspiring . . . Northup's story seems almost biblical! structured as it is as a descent and resurrection narrative of a protagonist who! like Christ! was 33 at the time of his abduction. . . . Northup reminds us of the fragile nature of freedom in any human society and the harsh reality that whatever legal boundaries existed between so-called free states and slave states in 1841! no black man! woman or child was permanently safe. Henry Louis Gates! Jr.! from the Afterword For sheer drama! few accounts of slavery match Solomon Northup's tale of abduction from freedom and forcible enslavement. Ira Berlin! from the Introduction If you think the movie offers a terrible-enough portrait of slavery! please! do read the book. . . . The film is stupendous art! but it owes much to a priceless piece of document. Solomon Northup's memoir is history. . . . His was not simply an extraordinary story! but an account of the life of a great many ordinary people. The Daily Beast An incredible document! amazingly told and structured. Tough! but riveting. The movie of it by Steve McQueen might be the most successful adaptation of a book ever undertaken; text and film complement each other wildly. Rachel Kushner! The New York Times Book Review The best firsthand account of slavery. James M. McPherson! Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Battle Cry of Freedom! in The New York Times Book Review Northup published a memoir of his 12-year nightmare in 1853! the year after Uncle Tom's Cabin came out! and it was so successful that he went on to participate in two stage adaptations. The book dropped from sight in the 20th century! but the movie tie-in will certainly reestablish its virtually unique status as a work by an educated free man who managed to return from slavery. The Hollywood Reporter Informationen zum Autor SOLOMON NORTHUP was a free man kidnapped into slavery in Washington, D.C. in 1841. Shortly after his escape, he published his memoirs to great acclaim and brought legal action against his abductors, though they were never prosecuted. The details of his life thereafter are unknown, but he is believed to have died in Glen Falls, New York, around 1863. IRA BERLIN is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He has written broadly on the history of the larger Atlantic world, especially on African and African American slavery and freedom. His many books include The Making of African America, Slaves Without Masters, Generations of Captivity, and Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America , winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Henry Louis Gates Jr is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or coauthored more than twenty books and created more than twenty documentary films, including his groundbreaking genealogy series Finding Your Roots . His six-part PBS documentary, The African ...

Autorentext
SOLOMON NORTHUP was a free man kidnapped into slavery in Washington, D.C. in 1841. Shortly after his escape, he published his memoirs to great acclaim and brought legal action against his abductors, though they were never prosecuted. The details of his life thereafter are unknown, but he is believed to have died in Glen Falls, New York, around 1863. IRA BERLIN is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He has written broadly on the history of the larger Atlantic world, especially on African and African American slavery and freedom.

His many books include The Making of African America, Slaves Without Masters, Generations of Captivity, and Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Henry Louis Gates Jr is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or coauthored more than twenty books and created more than twenty documentary films, including his groundbreaking genealogy series Finding Your Roots. His six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, earned an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and an NAACP Image Award. This series and his PBS documentary series Reconstruction: America after the Civil War were both honored with the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. His most recent PBS documentary is Gospel.

Klappentext
Now the major motion picture that won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Picture, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Lupita Nyong'o, and directed by Steve McQueen

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation.

After his rescue, Northup published this exceptionally vivid and detailed account of slave life. It became an immediate bestseller and today is recognized for its unusual insight and eloquence as one of the very few portraits of American slavery produced by someone as educated as Solomon Northup, or by someone with the dual perspective of having been both a free man and a slave.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Zusammenfassung
Born a free man in New York State in 1808, Solomon Northup was kidnapped in Washington, DC, in 1841. He spent the next twelve years as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. During this time he was frequently abused and often afraid for his life. In this book, he gives an account of his captivity.