Product Description

In the late summer of 1831, in a remote section of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery...

The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner, an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution. The compelling story ranges over the whole of Nat's Life, reaching its inevitable and shattering climax that bloody day in August.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is not only a masterpiece of storytelling; is also reveals in unforgettable human terms the agonizing essence of Negro slavery. Through the mind of a slave, Willie Styron has re-created a catastrophic event, and dramatized the intermingled miseries, frustrations--and hopes--which caused this extraordinary black man to rise up out of the early mists of our history and strike down those who held his people in bondage.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #255186 in Books
• Published on: 1992-11-10
• Released on: 1992-11-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From Library Journal
Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel depicting the leader of a slave revolt is the latest offering in Random's "Modern Library." This is the least expensive hardcover edition of Turner currently available.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Few first novels promised so much for a new writer as Styron's Faulknerian Lie Down in Darkness; with only one flawed major book in between, now sixteen years later it is difficult to relate this to the early book except for the emotional charge of some of the writing, most effective when descriptive. In the fulminating first person of Nat Turner, Just before he is to be killed, this reviews at black heat the "ruction" he incited - a mass murder and rape in the Virginia of 1831. "Nigger preacher," self-designated prophet, Nat is primarily a man who for the last half of his thirty-one years has nursed a "pure and obdurate" hatred for white men (and a less pure desire for their women). In the language of the law he's just an "animate chattel" although he had acquired the "lineaments not just of literacy out of knowledge" through one master who had educated him to be emancipated, then sold him because of economic pressures. On the one hand Nat thinks many bitter, contemporary thoughts about the Negro's imputed intellectual, spiritual and biological (but not sexual) inferiority; on the other hand, the novel is full of Yassuh-Massa survival stereotypes and situations from a much older literature (i.e. memories of his mother submitting to the white overseer; of blonde Miss Emmaline sullied and "ravished" by her cousin, etc.). This makes the book uneasy to reconcile - whether as a polemic or a novel; and then again there is no congruence between the Nat Turner who lived and died before the Civil War and the Nat Turner who seems to be a superimposition of the '60's, resurrected in some flagrantly modern scenes. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Publisher
12 1.5-hour cassettes

Customer Reviews

Make Sure You Read the Vintage Edition with the Afterword
I initially purchased this book to read for two reasons: First, it was written by William Styron, who wrote the great "Sophie's Choice;" and second, it won a Pulitzer Prize. It was only after I was into the book that I learned that this vintage sixties' book was the subject of a major controversy over the depiction of the title character, Nat Turner.

I learned that Styron openly acknowledged fictionalizing large portions of Turner's life, including his motivations for leading the slave revolt. I also learned that Styron's largely fictionalized portrait of Turner outraged many black leaders of the time. Rather than painting Turner (entirely) as a hero, called to action by the injustices of slavery, Styron created a darker picture of a man fixated on religion, a vision of himself as a prophet, and frustrated by lust and desire (particularly, for a young, blond haired white girl).

As I read the book, I search my own feelings, and felt that if I were black, I would certainly have objected similarly. We all need our heroes, who become much larger as symbols than they could ever be as people. For the sake of those that come after, such icons are perhaps entitled to be treated with a greater level of sensitivity and care--even at the cost of literary restraint.

It is here that the story gets fascinating. After I finished the novel, I read Styron's Afterword. Styron was truly stung by the criticism and in the Afterword, provided an elegant and persuasive defense of his writings. While I will not say that Styron entirely changed my position, he definitely made me see the other side of the argument. The dialogue between Styron and his critics not only allows the reader to consider one of the great social and political issues of our time, but permits the reader a unique insight into the thinking of a great writer--and suffices, in and of itself, as a reason for reading this novel. MAKE SURE YOUR VERSION OF THE NOVEL HAS THIS AFTERWORD.

Putting the issue aside as to the real "Nat Turner," the novel itself is beautifully written. The characters are fully developed and believable. The description of the system of slavery and the relationship between whites and blacks feel very real, and very accurate. Styron shows us good and bad of each race, and how all of them are bound by the system of slavery and their actions directly the product of it.

A Haunting Masterpiece Of Historical Fiction
Upon it's publication, William Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner" was hailed by The New York Times as "a triumph", and described as "the most profound fictional treatment of slavery in our literature" by The New Republic. Despite these and other glowing reviews, the book was also denounced as racist garbage which perpetuates dangerous stereotypes about African-Americans - particularly the stereotype of the sexual aggressive black male.

I will talk more about this in a moment, but first I would like to say that I did not find anything racist about this novel. I found it instead to be a raw, brutal, yet strangely beautiful, work about the horror and injustice of slavery. While there are several scenes of physical brutality and deprivation between masters and slaves in this novel, Styron, through the voice of Nat, focuses more on the grinding psychological and emotional toll of slavery. Even in Virginia, the setting of the novel, where the condition of the average slave was considered "not that bad" by the standards of the time, the soul-crushing, mind-annihilating condition of being human chattel was an overwhelming burden. Nat's description of this sort of "life", and his fiery rage at the white characters of this novel are truly terrifying and unforgettable.

Nat himself is portrayed as a complex and (usually) sympathetic character. He is neither a zealot or a mad-man or a one-dimensional symbol. Styron notably leaves out some of the known biographic details of Turner in his narrative - Turner's wife and child, for example - perhaps in order to develop (the fictional) Nat's inner-conflicts regarding love, hate, sexuality and sanctity, all of which are central to the novel. To return to the above-mentioned allegations of racism, it will not give too much away to reveal that Nat at one point fantasizes about raping a white woman after she reveals her own vulnerability to him and several other slaves. I saw this, and similar scenes, not as a stereotypical portrayal of uncontrollable, animal lust (a la "Gone with the Wind") but rather as a symptom of mental and emotional confusion/frustration stemming from a cruel lifetime of hatred, betrayal and deprivation. Other, perhaps less "self aware", black characters I believe are similarly meant to be viewed as products of their environments. This was my interpretation of the more controversial aspects of the novel, and I hope that other readers will not have their views towards an entire race of people diminished or altered by scenes which, I believe, are meant to shock the reader into a deeper understanding of the iniquities of human bondage.

This is a deeply haunting work of fiction (and I emphasize the word fiction, as other reviewers before me have) and one that will be hard to forget. Read this with an open mind (and a copy of the historical accounts of Turner's revolt near at hand) and hopefully you were be brought to a deeper understanding not only of slavery and early American history, but also the strength and frailty of the human soul.

Superb. Left me breathless
I too, am going to have to say that many recent reviewers have said what I would say if I could express myself so eloquently. This is a powerful and beautifully written book. I had heard about it and was curious, but had no idea the impact it would have on me. As a white person I've often wondered why this degree of rage hasn't been touched on before; I've always thought I would have been consumed with it had I been treated as the blacks have been. Styron's novel will haunt you long after you finsh the book.