ROOTS by Alex Haley

Narrated by Avery Brooks

     Hoax—With the Ring of Truth    

Try to consider this novel on the merits of its drama and story alone and try to ignore, for a moment, the dubious claims by Alex Haley that it relates the actual history of his supposed ancestor Kunta Kinte. This is a fine story and has as much relevance to the human condition and the desire to be free as any Military Sci-Fi Space Opera fighting the tyranny of alien overlords or any Zombie Apocalypse novel resisting extinction against impossible odds. The mini-series enthralled me in 1977, and this audiobook captivated me thirty-eight years later. 

If you are not aware of the controversy surrounding this Pulitzer Prize winning novel consider just these two facts: (1) Alex Haley paid $650,000 after a court judgment against him to Harry Courlander for lifting eighty-one passages from the novel The African in 1978. (2) The slave Toby, the supposed Kunta Kinte in Haley’s genealogy, has a paper-trail in America going back four years before the slave ship the Lord Ligonier arrived on American shores.. While these problems of provenance do lessen the impact of this novel from a historical perspective—and should dampen any social impact of this false narrative— the novel, as a work of pure fiction, still stands on its own. The author’s afterward, detailing Haley’s journey of discovery of his family’s African history, should be treated as a short story; a coda added to give the work a sense of verisimilitude.

No one questions the horrors of the period of history involving the slave trade between Africa and North America. It is easy to imagine that accounts very similar to those in this book actually did take place. And that is why this book can still have some impact. The actual story may be false as a history but the story reflects a reality that transcends the veracity of the account. I only wish that Alex Haley had chosen to tell this story as a piece of fiction, avoiding plagiarism along the way. It is a shame that such a powerful book must be tainted with scandal.

Avery Brooks (Captain Sisko on Star Trek Deep Space Nine) narrates this book with just the right tone of voice. The early chapters are told strictly from an omniscient 3^rd person narration perspective, and here Avery Brooks does not get much of a chance to display his talents. But once Kunta Kinte gets established in the Plantation system of the Virginia colony, several other characters are introduced and Mr. Brooks begins to shine. He handles the accents of both slaves and the Plantation owners adroitly. He adds greatly to the audiobook experience.