Oroonoko is an African prince, brave and eloquent, who falls in love with the beautiful Imoinda — only to be betrayed, captured, and sold into slavery in the English colony of Surinam. Written by Aphra Behn in 1688, one of the first professional women writers in English, Oroonoko is widely considered one of the earliest English novels and one of the first works of English fiction to confront the horrors of the slave trade with sympathy and moral outrage. A landmark of literary history — at once a romance, an adventure, and an unflinching indictment of colonial cruelty.
