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Roots

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Roots

By: Alex Haley
Narrated by: Avery Brooks
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Tracing his ancestory through six generations - slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lawyers and architects - back to Africa, Alex Haley discovered a sixteen-year-old youth, Kunta Kinte. It was this young man, who had been torn from his homeland and and in torment and anguish brought to the slave markets of the New World, who held the key to Haley's deep and distant past.

©2011 Alex Hayley (P)2011 Random House Audio Go Classics Cultural & Regional Fiction Historical Fiction Heartfelt Inspiring Scary Thought-Provoking
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I remember as a teenager watching Roots on the TV in my NW London Irish home. I went to an ethnically diverse school in Wembley and I was profoundly impacted by the series along with my friends of Afro Caribbean descent for whom the real history of their ancestors was being told to them for the first time. Not for them the Tudors and Stuart’s and the English, white history we were being taught. A school friend was so inspired by Haley that he too researched his ancestry all the way back through Jamaica and Ghana. I read the book and never forgot the details of Kunta and Kizzy’s story. I am now in my mid 50’s and listening to the audio book has brought back all those feelings I had as a 15 year old. I cried again as I listened to the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery and the prejudice and discrimination suffered by generations of black people. I listen to the news stories coming out of America about the Black Lives Matter movement and the lack of societal progress and I wonder what Alex Haley would make of it if he were alive.

Timeless

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I red this book ages go, seen both Tv series and had a hankering to read it again, but lost my copy so used a credit and listened. Absolutely fabulous, excellent narration, so beautifully read. Enjoyed every word, laughed and cried with the slaves all over again. Horrified anew about how these people and thousands like them were treated. Everyone should read or listen to this.

Amazing

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Despite having seen the TV series as a teenager, this book reading really brought history to life. Should be on every school syllabus alongside the Anne Frank story. A wonderful reading that often left me staying in the car after reaching a destination just to hear a little more of this incredible story. This book alone is worth the audible membership.

Not to be missed

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My memories of the TV show for roots are obviously faded and I approached this book with trepidation expecting to get something filled with (justifiable) hate and emotional trauma. But in the end I think this is far more a story of hope and triumph than it is of bitterness and human suffering.

Alex Haley's story covers such an amazing timescale of Afro-American history and Avery Brooks has given a stunning performance.

Nothing like I imagined

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I watched the series when it was original lay released. I read the book several years later. And ow I have listened to the stories.

Reading was wonderfully done and it was even better than my own imagination could muster.

Thank you Mr Haley and your team.

Powerful

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