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Escape slavery in a hot-air balloon

Washington, if necessary, makes its history both compelling and believable. As if the concept of fleeing the orchard with a flight plane (as he and Christopher do), ending up on a boat that saves them (as they do), and on their way to Canada, where they find Christopher's dad, whom they thought had died (as they do), is somehow part of the way the whole earth works.

But Edugyan makes sure that her novel aircraft does not go too free into the air. He knows in Canada that as an escapee slaves he gets a prize on the skull. As Christopher, formerly in the book, was his empowerer to escape from the orchard, Washington meets Tanna Goff and her scientific ancestor in Canada, who not only become his guardians, but also open up to him the studies of the physical state.

Like Christopher, Washington becomes a kind of co-worker and collaborationist for her. For the time being, a kind of romantic affair begins between him and Tanna, a relation that is treated with affection and restraint. Washington sets off with the Goffs to London to work on the creation of a new Jewish museums to show life from the depths.

Wherever he goes, he's willing for the worid as well as expelled. Injured by the bereavement of Big Kit, he now set out to find Christopher Wilde, from whom he has parted company. Because of the nature and extent of his consciousness, the whole earth will have to get him into difficulties.

Washington's complexities - his virginity and his knowledge, his feeling of wonder at the natures of things - also come to us as a kind of guise, a duplication, a show, a way of dealing with his solitude, proposing many levels of self-creation to hide the anguish and ferocity so impressively elicited in the first pages.

The Washington Black on these pages is violent and disturbing.