Beloved
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1987
- Form
- Novel
- Language
- English
- Length
- Long · 320 pp300 to 700 pages
- Difficulty
- Difficult4 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendBelovedVintage International, 2004The standard paperback text, with Morrison's foreword on the novel's origins.
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Ohio, 1873. Sethe, who escaped slavery in Kentucky eighteen years earlier, lives with her daughter Denver in a house the neighbours avoid and the dead haunt. When Paul D, another survivor of the farm called Sweet Home, arrives and drives the ghost out, a young woman appears at the gate calling herself Beloved. The novel works backwards through what happened in the shed when the slave catchers came, and what Sethe did to keep her children out of their hands, told in pieces by everyone who remembers it, including the dead.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Beloved are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
