How long is it?
432 pages in the Amistad 2006 paperback edition.
Fiction · Novel · Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction
The Known World
Highly regardedPulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2004Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 66 / 100High
- Length
- 432 pagesAmistad · 2006
- Reading time
- 8 h 45 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 5 / 5
About 8 h 45 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 18 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Henry Townsend, a formerly enslaved Black bootmaker, owns a plantation and thirty-three enslaved people in fictional Manchester County, Virginia. His former owner, William Robbins, has helped him prosper, to his parents' dismay. When Henry dies in 1855, his widow Caldonia inherits the estate and relies on Moses, its enslaved overseer, to keep it running. Across the county, even free Black residents face the threat of losing their liberty to slave patrollers and traders.
Reader notes
The historical novel unfolds across a large, connected cast, its omniscient narrator reaching backward and forward in time. The pace is deliberate and the chronology demands concentration, while slavery's violence and abuse remain plainly present throughout.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Dense · Descriptive · Lyrical
- Tone
- Cerebral · Dark · Melancholic · Reflective
- Structure
- Multiple timelines · Nonlinear
- Driven by
- Character · Ideas · Relationships
- Point of view
- Third person, omniscient
- Setting
- Virginia
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 4 / 5
- Ideas
- 4 / 5
- Structure
- 4 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 2 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Community
- Family
- Morality
- Oppression
- Power
- Race and racism
Content notes
- Violence
- Strong
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- Strong
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Standing and awards
Highly regarded
- International Dublin Literary Award, 2005
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2004
- National Book Critics Circle Award, 2003
- National Book Award finalist, 2003
- Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee, 2004
- NYT 10 Best Books, 2003
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Amistad · 2006 · Paperback. ISBN 9780061159176.
How long does it take to read The Known World?
About 8 hours 45 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 432-page Amistad edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Edward P. Jones
Edward P. Jones is an American novelist and short-story writer whose fiction builds social history from closely observed individual lives. His realism attends to ordinary speech, family obligations, economic pressure, and choices whose effects spread through homes and neighborhoods. Lost in the City assembles stories about African American working-class residents of twentieth-century Washington, D.C., including families shaped by the Great Migration from the rural South. The stories stand alone while forming a layered urban portrait. In The Known World, Jones widens the frame to a fictional Virginia county, placing a Black slaveholder within overlapping networks of law, property, kinship, affection, and exploitation. The broad cast and dense historical narration preserve slavery’s violence while refusing to simplify the compromised relations around it.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Amistad
- Publication year
- 2006
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 432
- ISBN
- 9780061159176
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 2003
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Historical Fiction · Literary Fiction · Historical fiction · Family saga · Social novel
- Editions
- 15
- Languages
- 4 (German, English, Spanish, Dutch)