ther than Africa in no way diminishes the power of his testimony. Autobiography, after all, is always partly fictional, the narrator excited by storytelling, by shaping and plotting the tale and by dressing up dull facts. Equiano was African in terms of origin, he knew the horrors of the slave trade which by the 1780s were widely broadcast by white abolitionists. What he did was to take it upon himself to write the first substantial account of slavery from an African viewpoint but, as importantly, to write it with pulse and heartbeat, giving passion to the subject so as to arouse sympathy and support for the cause of abolition. With Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and Granville Sharpe, Equiano was a major abolitionist, working ceaselessly to expose the nature of the shameful trade. He travelled throughout Britain with copies of his book, and thousands upon thousands attended his readings. When John Wesley lay dying, it was Equiano's book he took up to reread.
Carretta's biography, far from detracting from Equiano's greatness, calls attention to it. Apart from the doubt about Equiano's birth, Carretta has tracked down records proving that practically everything else he told about his life was factually correct. Carretta reveals a man almost unique in his travelling and experience of different cultures and landscapes. Equiano worked on ships trading in the West Indies, North America, Central America and the Mediterranean. In 1773 he was an able seaman on the Phipps expedition to the North Pole - probably the first African to set foot on Arctic ice. And wherever he went he sought out the strangeness of the place, never allowing his status as an exploited black man to dim his sense of awe. Sailing to Philadelphia he is "surprised at the sight of some whales, having never seen any such large sea monsters before"; in Italy he witnesses an eruption of Mount Vesuvius - "it was extremely awful"; sighting Arctic ice he is moved by "the whole of this striking, grand and uncommon scene; and, to heighten it still more, the reflection of the sun from the ice gave the clouds a most beautiful appearance." Always he conveys the sense of a natural world of overpowering beauty, far removed from the sordid human world of slavery.
Equiano's autobiography, Carretta suggests, is a monumental 18th-century text, a unique mixture of travel-writing, sea lore, sermon, economic tract and fiction. That the early chapters may have invented a life in Africa only adds to our appreciation of Equiano's imaginative depth and literary talent. Carretta has done great service to the study of the African diaspora, unearthing more documentation on Equiano than any previous scholar, even locating the gravestone of Equiano's daughter, Joanna, in Abney Park Cemetery, North London. He deserves applause, not resentment, for his indefatigable research.