Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Oroonoko
    Unavailable
    Oroonoko
    Unavailable
    Oroonoko
    Ebook104 pages2 hours

    Oroonoko

    By Aphra Behn

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    "Oroonoko" by Aphra Behn is an important work of western literature. Published in 1688, it follows the tragic love story of Oroonoko and Imoinda, two Coromantin lovers. The two young people fall deeply in love with each other and are secretly married. Yet the king also loves Imoinda, and commands that she become a part of his harem. When he discovers that she has already lost her virginity, he secretly sells her as a slave. Because of his overwhelming guilt, the king lies to Oroonoko and says that Imoinda has died. Oroonoko carries on with his life without Imoinda. Yet he is later betrayed by a friend and is also sold into slavery. The two lovers are surprisingly reunited, and they continue their relationship. Imoinda becomes pregnant, and the two petition to be allowed to return to their homeland. Their request is denied, so Oroonoko organizes a slave revolt. The lovers plan to kill their oppressor, but Oroonoko is worried at how Imoinda will be treated if he is killed. They discuss their options, and they realize that the only way to escape this world with honor is for Imoinda to die. Oroonoko kills Imoinda, but he is too deep in mourning to carry out their original plan. Oroonoko is sentenced to death, but he stands stoically while his oppressors dismember him. A deeply moving and tragic tale of love and loss, "Oroonoko" stands as one of the first great English novels and a classic of the canon of Western fiction.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2013
    ISBN9781420901672
    Author

    Aphra Behn

    Born in the first few decades of the seventeenth century, Aphra Behn is one of early literature’s best-known female writers. Behn had the lucky distinction of being able to support herself strictly by her “pen,” something unheard of for women of her time. Throughout her long career, she wrote in various forms—poetry, plays, prose—and is known as a member of the ‘fair triumvirate of wit’ alongside fellow scribes Eliza Haywood and Delarivier Manley. Although little is known about her early life, Behn’s father held a post as lieutenant governor of Surinam, and Behn’s experiences during her stay most likely formed the basis for her most famous work, Oroonoko. Behn was also a popular dramatist in her time, penning critical successes like The Rover and The Feigned Courtesans. Her literary exploits aside, Behn is also known to have acted as a political spy for King Charles II of England during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Behn died in 1689, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

    Read more from Aphra Behn

    Related to Oroonoko

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Armchair Dramatics

      May 6, 2020

      Armchair Dramatics
      3 min read

    • Article

      Double Trouble In Chaotic Comedy

      Nov 25, 2021

      THE ARRIVAL OF THE Christmas season is a reminder that while the West End is the beating heart of British theatre, it is in what used to be called the “provinces” — now more delicately in arts-speak the “regions” — that most of the country experience

      3 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Dec 28, 2021

      Anniversaries
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Volcanic, Uncontrollable Visions Of A Master Reborn – Late Constable Review

      Oct 26, 2021

      There was no honking traffic on the A303 near Stonehenge when John Constable captured the monument in 1835, no visitor centre, no crowds circling the perimeter in an endless flow. In his watercolour, the site stands alone and utterly mysterious, with

      5 min read

    • Article

      Robert Thicknesse on Opera

      Apr 29, 2021

      HOW DID A NATION as doughy and uncouth as the English ever produce the world’s greatest body of poetry? It winds foreigners up almost as much as our habit of conducting seminars in international trade with the help of a Maxim gun, and is especially g

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Best Books Of The Year

      Dec 13, 2023

      The Best Books Of The Year
      8 min read

    • Article

      Crazy For Cider

      Aug 25, 2021

      JAMES CROWDEN is a poet, shepherd and total cider nut. In this, at least his third book on the subject, there is no other drink but that it suffers from his passion for cider, apple brandy and cider’s delicate, sweet sister, perry—and almost no momen

      5 min read

    • Article

      Oldies Make The Best Holiday Companions

      Jul 28, 2022

      ON THE PENETRATING QUESTION of what fiction to take on holiday, this year The Critic offers a novel approach. Why heft around the Dolomites the bulk of an untested hardback, by a wet-behind-the-ears author who isn’t even dead yet, when you can halve

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Landscape Was His Mistress

      Feb 9, 2022

      IN 1802, John Constable wrote seven observations and resolutions about art. In them, among other things, he pledged to follow Nature, to make ‘unaffected’ pictures, and to avoid ‘common place people’. He also declared that ‘there is no easy way of be

      5 min read

    • Article

      Welcome Returns For Three Irish Writers

      Apr 1, 2022

      These Days Lucy Caldwell (Faber, £12.99) Homesickness Colin Barrett (Jonathan Cape, £14.99) The Geometer Lobachevsky Adrian Duncan (Tuskar Rock, £14.99) THE STUFFY OLD WORLD of publishing is no more immune to neophilia than the rest of our society an

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Gall Of Saul

      Nov 30, 2023

      ● I HEAR THINGS ARE PRETTY rocky over in the Middle East, but how infinitely more dreadful had the Cambridge “Uni” production of Handel’s Saul actually gone ahead! Just in time, thank God, they realised how inflammatory it would be to perform this un

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Waste Land turns 100

      Oct 19, 2022

      The Waste Land turns 100
      5 min read

    • Article

      All The World’s A Stage

      Apr 6, 2023

      All The World’s A Stage
      5 min read

    • Article

      Francis Spufford Vividly Recreates an 18th-Century New York in ‘Golden Hill’

      Jul 26, 2018

      Dear Reader, envision that Village which grew upon the southern strand of that isle of Manhattoes: a Lenape settlement purchased for 60 guilders and named for Amsterdam, later to be acquired by gunships of King James, and her wooden-legged governor r

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Grand Tour

      Feb 29, 2024

      OPERA’S VALUE AS A GUIDE TO negotiating the old vale of tears continues to be hotly debated — well, here, anyway; to be fair, it’s got to be a better bet than mime. On the plus side, you can expect loads of hot sex and a richly varied emotional life.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Good, The Bad And The Frankly Awful

      Oct 25, 2023

      Timothy Mowl and Julian Orbach (Stephen Morris, £20) IN his epistolary novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), Tobias Smollett, has the comically hypochondriac and irascible—but gradually mellowing—figure of Matthew Bramble, a country squire

      6 min read

    • Article

      How to Read a Squiggle

      Jul 18, 2017

      How to Read a Squiggle
      6 min read

    • Article

      From Russia, With Love

      Sep 14, 2022

      From Russia, With Love
      5 min read

    Reviews for Oroonoko

    3/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words