Roots

A gripping mixture of urban confessional and political manifesto, it not only inspired a generation of black activists, but drove home the bitter realities of racism to a mainstream white liberal audience * Observer *
A Pulitzer Prize-winning story about the family ancestry of author Alex Haley… [and] a symbolic chronicle of the odyssey of African Americans from the continent of Africa to a land not of their choosing * Washington Post *
Haley succeeds beautifully where many have failed… The book is an act of love, and it is this which makes it haunting – James Baldwin * New York Times *

Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York in 1921. After retiring from the Coast Guard in 1959, Haley began his writing career and eventually became a senior editor for Reader’s Digest.

Haley conducted the first Playboy Interview for Playboy magazine, featuring jazz legend Miles Davis in the September 1962 issue. Another notable interview was with Malcolm X in 1963 for Playboy, which led to a collaboration on the activist’s autobiography. Haley later ghostwrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X, based on interviews conducted shortly before Malcolm’s death. Published in 1965, the book was a major success and was later named by Time magazine as one of the ten most important nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

In 1976, Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a novel loosely based on his family’s history. The book traced his ancestry back to Africa and covered seven American generations, starting from his ancestor, Kunta Kinte. Roots was eventually published in thirty-seven languages, won the Pulitzer Prize, and became a popular television miniseries in 1977, sparking a renewed interest in genealogy.

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