Plot
The Known World has no real plot; rather, it glides back and forth in time, zooming in on the lives of its characters. Set in fictional Manchester County, Virginia, the story begins with the premature death of Henry Townsend. A former slave whose freedom is bought by his father Augustus, Townsend comes to own thirty-three slaves. In one scene, he admits to making his first purchase, and his parents are horrified. (Augustus, a carpenter and walking-stick carver, once used a boxed shipment of his sticks to smuggle a runaway slave to freedom, a vignette that echoes the true story of Henry Box Brown.) When Henry tells Augustus of his purchase, the father replies, “You could not have hurt me more if you had cut off my arms and my legs.” He then attacks Henry with one of his sticks, breaking his shoulder.