Oroonoko

Oroonoko was published in 1688 by Aphra Behn (10 July 1640 – 16 April 1689). Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave is a relatively short novel concerning the Coromantin grandson of an African king, Prince Oroonoko, who falls in love with Imoinda, the daughter of that king's top general. The novel concerns Oroonoko, the grandson of an African king, who falls in love with Imoinda, the daughter of that king's top general. The king, too, falls in love with Imoinda. He gives Imoinda the sacred veil, thus commanding that she become one of his wives. Imoinda and Oroonoko plan a tryst with the help of the sympathetic Onal and Aboan. However, they are discovered, and because of her choice, the king has Imoinda sold as a slave. Oroonoko is then tricked and captured by an evil English slaver captain. Both Imoinda and Oroonoko are carried to Surinam, at that time an English colony based on sugarcane plantations, in the West Indies.

Aphra Behn's short novel Oroonoko is one of the first realistic prose narratives in English literature, contains a number of elements that are new: the chatty narrative style; the narrative authority who is recognizably female; and a plot which takes place in the New World, a slave uprising in the British colony of Surinam.