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Title: A dissent from all the accolades....
Review: First of all, I'll admit I gave up after 100 pages, but I think that's a fair trial. I suppose I see what Jones is trying to do with his incessant time traveling--show the historic and personal effects of slavery as an institutional network that traversed the "known world" across time and space. Or at least that's what I think he's trying to do. This may be an interesting and creative approach (the two stars are for effort), but extremely uninspiring and uninvolving--and very annoying--in its execution. Vonnegut did it better in "Slaughterhouse Five". "The Known World" is yet another book that impresses critics and wins awards with its high-concept literary pyrotechnics, but has no story and no people that really capture one's imagination. It has, one will excuse the expression, very little soul. The book left me cold. I'll stick with Baldwin, Morrison, Wideman, Angelou, Walker, and--especially on the subject of slavery--Frederick Douglass.
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