The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho

"Charles Ignatius Sancho was a real person: abolitionist, merchant, composer, husband, father, freed slave and the first known Black man to vote in a British general election. His fictionalized diaries imagine his youthful antics and, in an epistolary interlude, his long-distance romance; these are interleaved with brief detours into his respectable, gout-plagued middle age. The vibe is rollicking, but Charles’ bone-deep fear of slave catchers underlines the story with anxiety and sadness. Our hero’s bouncy resilience despite an unjust society and his personal demons (gambling, alcoholism, indigence) makes for a thrilling read that’s neither trauma porn nor superficial picaresque. A note for book-design nerds: The endpapers on this baby are to die for."