SHORTLISTED FOR THE NONFICTION CROWN AWARD 2024

GUARDIAN: BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024

‘GRIPPING’ THE TIMES

This is an iconic and revealing story of the survivors of the Clotilda, the last ship of the Atlantic slave trade, whose lives intersected and interacted in significant ways.

The Clotilda docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama in July 1860—more than fifty years after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the start of the Civil War. The last survivors lived until the mid-twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in global history.

In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin recounts the stories of Clotilda’s 110 captives, based on intensive archival, historical, and sociological research.

The survivors trace their lives from their abductions in the modern-day Nigerian territories, through a harrowing 45-day journey across the Middle Passage, to the subsequent sale of the 103 surviving children and youths into slavery throughout Alabama and the dawning of the Civil Rights Movement in Selma. The founding of the all-black African Town (later Africatown) in North Mobile—inspiration for Harlem Renaissance writers such as Zora Neale Hurston—and the establishment of the quilting community of Gee’s Bend, an artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous, are vividly captured.

An astonishing, deeply compelling tapestry of history, biography, and social commentary, The Survivors is a work that deepens our knowledge and understanding of the Atlantic slave trade and its lasting impact on contemporary life.

Pages: 432, Dimensions: 15.9x15.9cm