Set after the US Civil War (1861–65), Beloved is inspired by the story of African-American slave Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in Kentucky in 1856 by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. Morrison came across the story "A Visit to the Slave Mother who Killed Her Child" in an 1856 newspaper article.
The novel won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award. It was adapted in 1998 into a movie of the same name, starring Oprah Winfrey. A NY Times survey of writers and literary critics ranked Beloved the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006.
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