“The attention to period detail is not incidental, given the explosive nature of the subject matter: the African slave trade and the Middle Passage to the French colonies. To some extent, the routine features of the adventure are in tension with the particular sorrows of the kidnapped...De Fombelle recognizes many of these agonies, and his succinct and devastating explanations of the customs of the slave trade powerfully animate the facts.”
Read the full review in the New York Times Book Review.
