Benito Cereno

Herman Melville's tense novella sets an American captain aboard a strange Spanish slave ship where nothing is as it seems, in a masterful, unsettling study of slavery, perception and denial.

At a glance An affable American sea captain boards a battered Spanish vessel to offer aid, and… What it's about Benito Cereno follows Captain Amasa Delano as he assists a distressed… Told largely through Delano's limited, complacent perceptions, the novella slowly builds… Themes Melville probes the horror of slavery and the violence it breeds, the blindness…

Benito Cereno follows Captain Amasa Delano as he assists a distressed slave ship off the coast of Chile, puzzled by the strange behaviour of its Spanish commander and the unusual conduct of the enslaved Africans aboard.