Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, Morrison's spellbinding novel transforms history into a story on a biblical scale as well as a lullaby. Sethe, the protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. There are too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things occurred. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Morrison is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The New York Times Book Review Fiction Survey finds Beloved 'the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.' 324p.