Blood on the River

The winner of the 2021 Cundill History Prize and the 2021 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Blood on the River also won two of the highest honors for works of history, nabbing both the Frederick Douglass Prize and the Cundill History Prize in 2021. A book with profound relevance for our own time, Blood on the River "fundamentally alters what we know about revolutionary change" (Jennifer Morgan, Cundill Prize juror and professor of history, New York University).

Nearly two hundred sixty years ago, on Sunday, February 27, 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice--in present-day Guyana--launched a rebellion that came amazingly close to succeeding. Blood on the River is the explosive story of this little-known revolution, one that almost changed the face of the Americas. Michael Ignatieff, chair of the Cundill Prize jury, declared that Blood on the River "tells a story so dramatic, so compelling that no reader will be able to put the book down."

Drawing on nine hundred interrogation transcripts collected by the Dutch when the rebellion collapsed, and which were subsequently buried in Dutch archives, historian Marjoleine Kars "has constructed a gripping narrative that brings to life a forgotten world," according to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner.