Roots: The Saga of an American Family (SIGNED)

587 pp. 9 3/8 x 6 1/2. 8vo. Haley's famous novelization of the history of his family. "Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the U.S. down to Haley himself. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots, led to a cultural sensation in the United States. The novel spent 46 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List, including 22 weeks in that list's top spot. Subsequent to the original success of the novel and the miniseries, Haley was sued by author Harold Courlander, who asserted that Roots was plagiarized from his own novel The African, published nine years prior to Roots in 1967. The resulting trial ended with an out-of-court settlement and Haley's admission that some passages within Roots had been copied from Courlander's work. Separately, researchers also refuted Haley's claims that, as the basis for Roots, he had successfully traced his own ancestry back through slavery to a specific individual and village in Africa."