A Mercy

First UK edition. 8vo. Pp. [viii], 165, [1]. Claret cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine; dark green endpapers. Pictorial dustwrapper priced at £15.99 to front flap. The true first edition, published the month before the U.S. Knopf release.

Signed boldly by Morrison to title page at the 2008 Cheltenham Literature Festival, with promotional postcard laid in.

Author's ninth novel. A New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year selection. A prequel of sorts to Beloved (1987). The story of a mother in 1680s Maryland who casts off her daughter in order to save her from slavery, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize [twice], and the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. Recipient of the 2012 Presidential Medal of Honor. "A welding of poetry and history and psychological acuity." –The Washington Post