Roots - Alex Haley

“Roots” is one of those novels that you hear about but never really have the time to read. I’ve always wanted to read it but the length of it has always deterred me. It must be said that I’m not an avid reader and I mainly read chic lit and the odd crime novel. However one day I decided that the time had come and I picked up a copy of “Roots” on my way home from work and started reading it the same evening. To be honest it took me the better part of a month to read the entire novel, but having said that I’m really glad I did. The plot **************************** ”Roots” is an autobiographical novel in which we get to follow the author Alex Haley’s ...  Read the complete review

Alex Haley taught himself to write during a 20 year career in the US coast guard service. After retiring in 1959 as its first Chief Journalist, he became a magazine writer and interviewer before undertaking his first book The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He spent the next 12 years researching and writing Roots... This brilliant story tells us the monumental saga of one man's twelve year search for his family's origins. His determination and single minded devotion to his cause. The man Alex Haley is the black American who goes in search of his roots. All the way to Africa where it all began and through six generations of Slavery and then finally ...  Read the complete review

Haley's 'Roots' published in 1976 is one of the best and most vivid books I have ever read. It is a modern classic which won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and sold more than a million copies in its first year of publication. Roots comes with my 100% recommendation, here's why. The Storyline. *************** Roots is a account of the life of Kunta Kente, a young African boy, captured and shipped to the US to work as a slave. The book details the start of his life from his birth in 1750 in a village called Juffire in The Gambia, West Africa. As a young boy Kunta is captured and subsequently transported across the ...  Read the complete review

The tv mini-series brought "Roots" into our homes, and was excellent in it's own way, but the book is better I think. I love Alex Haley's eloquence, the picures that he paints in your mind - you feel the dusty heat of a dry Summer's day, you smell the food cooking, feel the fear and pain. Whether the subject matter appeals to you or not, Alex Haley must be regarded as a Master Storyteller. "Roots"seems to have been a turning point in literature, a beginning acceptance for black authors around the world. It's turbulent tale of the black man in America, based on Haley's own family history, is both painful and yet a triumph. Who has not heard of ...  Read the complete review