The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African

Olaudah Equiano was a former slave who became an outspoken opponent of the slave trade. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African is an exciting and terrifying adventure story Equiano's accounts of his kidnapping in Africa at the age of ten, his service as the slave of an officer in the British Navy, his ten years of labor on slave ships until he was able to purchase his freedom in 1766, and his life afterward as a leading and respected figure in the antislavery movement in England. It is a treatise on religion, politics, and economics, a work of enduring literary and historical value. "Permit me, with the greatest deference and respect, to lay at your feet the following genuine Narrative; the chief design of which is to excite in your august assemblies a sense of compassion for the miseries which the Slave-Trade has entailed on my unfortunate countrymen. By the horrors of that trade was I first torn away from all the tender connexions tha