This is Morrison's masterwork for which she was awarded the Pulitzer and, subsequently, the Nobel Prize. It is an unflinchingly tough and heart-wrenching novel, examining the ghosts of slavery in the lives of black American women. Sethe has killed her own daughter, Beloved, with a saw rather than return her to the plantations. Some years later, in the summer of 1873, a troubled and oddly familiar young woman appears in Sethe's life. Has the past caught up with her at last? Beloved is a novel of great lyrical beauty and emotional intensity. (Kirkus UK)