Unlike the other enslaved people (in the novel they are simply “the people”), Samuel and Isaiah work in the barn, where they tend to the animals. They are sixteen or seventeen and, over the past sixteen seasons (four years), they have developed a beautiful and dangerous intimacy. Shortly after this allusive opening chapter we meet Samuel and Isaiah, two enslaved young men on a cotton plantation called Empty in Louisiana, on the banks of the Yazoo River. The you it is addressed to is more mysterious – is it the reader, or someone within the story? Both become clear in time, as the speakers promise, and the answers are simpler than you might expect, which is how a lot of this novel is despite its dense and tricky sentences. The us is a chorus, perhaps not of this world. The Prophets begins with the declaration, “You do not know us”.
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