Washington Black, Esi Edugyan’s historical adventure first released in 2018, begins in the ruthless landscape of the Caribbean sugar trade of the 19th century, and the lives of those broken beneath it. It is within this hellish setting that the novel’s protagonist, the titular Washington ‘Wash’ Black, has lived his entire childhood under the merciless rule of plantation-owner Erasmus Wilde. Eventually, the promise of escape arrives with a visit from Erasmus’s younger brother, the inventor and abolitionist Christopher ‘Titch’ Wilde, who strikes up an uncertain, paternal connection with the young boy.
While the novel’s general premise, which sees the inventor and his recent protégé making a daring escape in a rudimentary flying machine, might imply an air of Victorian whimsy, Edugyan doesn’t shy from depicting in full the racial prejudice and brutal inequalities of the era. Edugyan writes first-hand from Wash’s perspective, prioritising his gaze, and it is through his eyes that we come to know his companion. For the most part, the novel’s central thread follows the unsteady dynamic of the kinship formed between the two, and Edugyan’s writing here is reflective and introspective, with each character searching the other for something of themselves and constantly coming up short.
All the inner contemplation of its narrative isn’t to say the novel doesn’t hold its fair share of adventure, as the plot propels Wash and Titch from the creeping desolation of the Arctic tundra to the edges of the Sahara. Her mismatched duo reveal themselves as pioneers, scholars, and romanticists, and Edugyan tosses each to the ends of the earth. By the novel’s end, the reader has been carried whip-speed across the known world and back again. Though this pacing somewhat prevents the reader from fully acclimatising themselves to each setting, it’s thrilling and hardly ever lets up.
Edugyan has a definite talent for writing rich, multi-faceted characters. Wash, Titch and the vast array of individuals they encounter on their travels feel unique in their eccentricities and flaws. Yet, while the author provides a clear picture of each of her characters, without spoiling too much of the plot, Edugyan allows them to act in unexpected ways which serve to both contradict and develop their initial conceptions. By the novel’s end, the reader has come to know the hearts and minds of her characters in full detail and yet, as Wash himself comes to find, feels almost further from understanding them; an accomplishment of Eugyan’s refusal to lean on trope and archetype in her characterisation. The only complaint I had of Washington Black’s wide array of characters is that the speed at which its protagonists encounter and depart from them often leaves the reader having spent frustratingly little time with each.
Washington Black is Edugyan’s second novel after her debut, 2011’s Half-Blood Blues, the story of a jazz musician’s escape from Nazi Berlin which saw Edugyan longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and established the author as a notable literary voice. With Washington Black, itself shortlisted for the prize, Edugyan only builds upon these successes, and in doing so provides an adventure which, while perhaps too globe-trotting for its own good, is at once ponderous and gripping; full of memorable characters whose foibles and idiosyncrasies will linger long in the mind.
Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan. £7.99, published by Profile Books Ltd
Words by Ronan Duff
This article was originally published as part of The Indiependent’s May 2020 charity magazine, which raised money for the British Lung Foundation. Find out more here.