The Confessions of Nat Turner

In 1831 a black man awaits death in a Virginia jail cell. His name is Nat Turner, and he is a slave, a preacher, and the leader of the only effective slave revolt is the history of the "peculiar institution." William Styron's vastly ambitious and stunningly accomplished novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is Turner's confession, made to his jailers under the duress of his God, a narrative that depicts a good man's transformation into an avenging angel even as it encompasses all the betrayals, cruelties, and humiliations that made up slavery and that still scar the collective psyches of both races.