Article: Division below the surface: Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative.

To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legend. --Erich Auerbach, Mimesis

NEARLY EVERY MATERIAL FEATURE OF OLAUDAH EQUIANO'S 1789 MEMOIR is, as it happens, interesting--not least so, the equivocal modifier that forms a nearly invisible part of the book's title: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. Equiano's story appeared at the close of a publishing era that prized true histories and surprising adventures, commercial labels invoking the appetite for wonder or novelty that sustained the English literary marketplace from the time ...

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