I’ve been mildly interested in Toussaint L’Ouverture ever since reading about him in the Haiti chapter of James Michener’s Caribbean, with its short historical notes at the end. But never interested enough to actually do anything about it until Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture, by Sudhir Hazareesingh, popped up on the UK Kindle Daily Deal today. This looked intriguing, but I like to know a bit about the authors of non-fiction books before I buy them, so I checked Hazareesingh at Wikipedia, and discovered that he’s a fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford (alma mater of Peter Wimsey, for those as mystery-novel obsessed as I am). And I further discovered that Black Spartacus won or was short-listed for a bunch of awards, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and was described by The Guardian as “a tour de force: by far the most complete, authoritative and persuasive biography of Toussaint that we are likely to have for a long time”. And all for £0.99 today. Now I just have to get it to the top of my TBR list, although it’s going to enter pretty near the top.
Buy at Kindle UK