Around the age of eleven, Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped from his Igbo village and sold into the Atlantic slave trade. He survived the middle passage, served on warships, taught himself to read, traded his way to the price of his own freedom, and in 1789 published this account, which became a bestseller and a weapon in the fight that eventually abolished the British slave trade.
It is the first great African autobiography in English, and for Nigerian readers it begins at home, with a portrait of Igbo life before the ships came. Every literate household should own it.
