Amado

The masterpiece by Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Toni Morrison, "the best American novel of the last fifty years" according to The New York Times, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award

"I cannot imagine American literature without this novel."
John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

To write this magnificent story, worthy of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison was inspired by the real life of an African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who in 1856 escaped from a plantation in Kentucky and managed to reach the free state of Ohio. On the verge of being recaptured, Margaret made the tragic decision to sacrifice her daughter to save her from a life in captivity.

In these pages, Sethe is the runaway slave who sold her body to engrave her dead daughter's name on the tombstone: ten minutes for "Beloved," twenty for "Dear Beloved." Many years later, Sethe lives in Ohio with Denver, her teenage daughter, and Paul D., an old friend who was also a slave. They all try to prosper and forget the past, until one day a young woman appears claiming to be Beloved. She is the age her daughter would be if she were alive and knows certain things that suggest it could be her.

Beloved immediately became a classic when it was published in 1987. Critic John Leonard wrote in Los Angeles Times: "I cannot conceive of American literature without this novel." Almost two decades later, The New York Times chose it as the best American novel of the last fifty years.

Reviews:
"One of the books for which it is worth returning to the library (even if it's virtual). Essential work by the Nobel Prize in Literature laureate."
Begoña Alonso, Elle

"Toni Morrison was a giant of her time and of ours. Everyone should

read Beloved."
Margaret Atwood, The New York Times

"Beloved is the great unwritten 19th-century American novel, it deals with things that were never written about and yet beat in the background of novels that were written, by Melville, by Poe."
A. S. Byatt

"A marvelous craftswoman whom people tend to overlook. She is as great and innovative as Faulkner, García Márquez, and Woolf."
The New York Times

"Toni Morrison's best work. [...] It shows her prodigious talent."
Chicago Sun-Times

"If there is one novel to start reading Toni Morrison with, it is Beloved. [...] Morrison is an American treasure."
New York Public Library

"I have finished a second reading of Beloved, Toni Morrison's mysterious and fascinating novel, where the world of black slaves becomes an intimate and at the same time magical matter. [...] And the protagonists are women, who challenge everything, and they themselves are freedom."
Sergio Ramírez, Babelia

"Her work is a beautiful and meaningful challenge to our consciences and our moral imagination."
Barack Obama

"Beloved makes you feel that everything you've written is boring and lifeless. The level of skill, the perfection and beauty of the sentences, the scope of the imagination, the order of language around unspeakable pain. It's excellent. Plus, it's our most American horror story. [...] I know Morrison didn't write for me, but she shaped my writing and I am eternally grateful."
Carmen María Machado