Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade

by Manu Herbstein

Paperback - 450 pages; published by [e-reads]; ISBN: 1-58586-932-5

The novel follows Ama from her capture and enslavement in northern Ghana in the late eighteenth century, through Yendi, Kafaba, Kumase, Elmina and the Middle Passage to a sugar estate in the Reconcavo of Bahia in Brazil. It includes historical characters such as Osei Kwadwo and Osei Kwame, fourth and fifth occupants of the Golden Stool, the Reverend Philip Quaque and the slave trader Richard Brew.

An African View Never has (the story of the Atlantic Slave Trade) been so captured in its total complexity, never have its tragic implications been laid out so fully, with all the scattered details brought together in one magnificent narrative of awesome and humbling imaginative impact . . . a long story that seems to have barely begun even as you reach the final page. Kofi Anyidoho, Professor and Head, Department of English, University of Ghana

An American View Ama is a deeply engrossing novel, and after completing it I understood, on a level I had never before experienced, the heart and soul and tragedy of the African-American . . . Ama is the archetypal story of an African woman's journey, not just from Africa to the Americas, but also from innocence to sophistication and ignorance to wisdom. Despite horrors that break almost all who experience them, Ama becomes more rebellious as she survives terror after terror. Richard Curtis, Publisher, e-reads

The author is a South African who has spent most of his adult life in Ghana.

For links to on-line vendors please visit the companion web-site http://www.ama.africatoday.com and click on ORDER AMA.  The link to the Amazon site is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585869325/ama-20.

The web-site has texts and references relevant to the period and geographical spread of the story as well as material on issues such as racism, reparations, teaching the slave trade and African partcipation in the slave trade.