Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745~1797) was born a slave, managed to buy himself out of captivity, became a sailor and merchant, experienced many adventures on land and sea, participated in the Seven Years' War and a polar expedition, and also worked as a hairdresser, servant, and overseer on the plantation and as a government commissioner. He devoted the last part of his life to the struggle for the abolition of slavery, and it was then that his famous “The Amazing Narrative of the Life of Olauda Equiano, or Gustav Vasa, the African, written by himself,” appeared. The book made him the first black English-language writer and made a stunning impression on his contemporaries, going through eight reprints in just five years - an unprecedented event for that era. Against the backdrop of Equiano's life, Vincent Carretta talks about the daily life of Britain and the West Indian colonies of the second half of the 18th century – on military and merchant ships, on slave plantations and on an Arctic expedition; writes about book publishing and journalism, about religious conflict in England and the intricacies of European politics; about the origins of the struggle against slavery and the heated debates in the British Parliament and in the press.