BELOVED

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has to o many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghos t of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: ...