Morrison, Toni

Tar Baby

ISBN: 0394423291
New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981. First Trade Edition. Hardcover. "The author of Song of Solomon now sets her extraordinary novelistic powers on a striking new course. Tar Baby, audacious and hypnotic, is masterful in its mingling of tones- of longing and alarm, or urbanity and a primal, mythic force in which the landscape itself becomes animate, alive with a wild, dark complicity in the fates of the people whose drama unfolds. It is a novel suffused with a tense and passionate inquiry, revealing a whole spectrum of emotions underlying the relationships between black men and women, white men and women, and black and white people." (from front flap) The fourth novel by Toni Morrison (1931-2019), the towering African-American novelist, essayist & academician, among the most Beloved (as in the title of her most famous, Pulitzer Prize-winning fifth novel) figures in all of American literature. Here, in a Caribbean island setting, Morrison explores the relations & contrasts between a privileged white couple & their black husband-&-wife servants; & the two people- a visitor & an intruder- who upend the delicate balance between & among them. Hardcover in clipped dust jacket, first trade edition as stated on copyright page (published simultaneously with a limited signed edition), first printing-state as indicated by ""3/81" printed near lower right corner of rear jacket flap. A very collectible, original version of a novel that has long taken its place in Morrison's classic canon. Book in fine condition with slight rubbing & browning to edges & corners of front, back covers & spine; moderate spotting to side edge of text block (untrimmed as issued); much less to lower edge of same; very slight fading & some short, faint scratches to purple-blue-dyed upper edge of same. Interior very fine with only mild browning & spotting to blank paste-downs & endpapers; miniscule bleeding of text block spots onto side & lower edges of a few page leaves. Dust jacket near-fine with mild rubbing, browning, scratching, occasional spotting & creasing to front, back covers, spine & flaps; mild wear & some tiny bumps, creases at thin edges & corners of same; very slight loss of paper to spine-edges & corners; one very short, closed tear at blank left-lower edge of back cover. Fine / Near Fine. [Item #4526]

Price: $100.00