Rough Crossings
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
Simon Schama's extraordinary novel in a new stage adaptation by Caryl Philips.
As the American War of Independence reaches its climax, a plantation slave and a British Naval Officer embark on an epic journey in search of freedom. Divided by barriers of race but united in their ambitions for equality, their convictions will change attitudes towards slavery forever.
Sweeping from the Deep South of America to the scorched earth of West Africa, Rough Crossings is a compelling true story that marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire.
Rough Crossings was staged by Headlong Theatre Company which opened at Birmingham Rep in September 2007 and toured the Lyric Hammersmith, Liverpool Playhouse and West Yorkshire Playhouse.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The plummy voice, ringing with the sound of perfectly enunciated consonants and gently undulating vowels, immediately rouses images of the ancient stone walls of Oxford and Cambridge. Schama's posh accent takes every line of his new book, every scrap of quoted dialogue, rolls them around in his mouth and gives them the shape and punch of a particularly well-formulated cocktail party bon mot. Schama's subject is not quite so lighthearted. Studying the lives of slaves and ex-slaves around the time of the American Revolution, Schama finds brutality, horror and the ever-present threat of a return to slavery, leading many blacks to embrace the British cause and the hope of freedom. Schama's Oxbridge voice, so overwhelmingly appealing to American listeners, who innately associate its sounds with the presence of deep wells of intelligence, is a lovely serving dish for his book's meal, decorating and presenting his work with an authoritative upper-class flourish. Simultaneous release with the Ecco hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 6).
