Beloved (novel)

Beloved is a 1987 novel by Toni Morrison about the legacy of slavery. It won Morrison the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. The novel is loosely based on the life and legal case of Margaret Garner who Morrison later wrote about again in the opera of the same name.

Beloved, Sethe's daughter, is the book's central figure; Sethe murdered her when she was only two in order to save her from a life of slavery. The novel follows in the tradition of slave narratives, but also confronts the more painful and taboo aspects of slavery, such as sexual abuse and violence. Morrison feels these issues were avoided in the traditional slave narratives. In the novel, Beloved, she explores the effects on the characters, Paul D and Sethe, of trying to repress – and then come to terms with – the painful memories of their past.

• ISBN 0140283404.