racing his ancestry through six generations of architects, lawyers, blacksmiths, farmers, freedmen and slaves, Alex Haley's research took him back to Africa and a sixteen-year-old youth named Kunta Kinte. Torn from his homeland and brought to the slave markets of the New World, re-imagining Kunta's journey would allow Haley to explore his family's deep and distant past.

'A gripping mixture of urban confessional and political manifesto, Roots not only inspired a generation of black activists, but drove home the bitter realities of racism to a mainstream white liberal audience' Observer