THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER by William Styron (1968)

This novel is a fictionalised account of a slave insurrection that took place in 1831 in the town of Jerusalem, now named Courtland, in Southampton County in the state of Virginia. It is based on an account of Nat Turner’s confessions published by a local lawyer, Thomas Gray.

William Styron, a Virginian by birth, assumes the voice of Turner, an educated slave and local preacher , who together with an assembled band of “ferocious miscreants” killed 59 whites; actions condemned by the white community as “random butchery”.

In an author’s note, Styron writes: “Perhaps the reader will wish to draw a moral from this narrative, but it has been my own intention to try to re-create a man and his era, and to produce a work that is less a ‘historical novel’ in conventional terms than a meditation on history”.

It is important to note that black intellectuals fiercely rejected Styron’s portrayal of the rebel leader and angrily accused the writer of being an apologist for slavery. Essays denouncing the novel were collected in The Second Crucifixion of Nat Turner, published in 1968. Continue reading →