Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Pox Party | 2006 | M.T. Anderson | Buy |
| 2 | The Kingdom on the Waves | 2008 | M.T. Anderson | Buy |
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation is M.T. Anderson’s most acclaimed work. The two volumes, The Pox Party (2006) and The Kingdom on the Waves (2008), tell the story of a young African American boy raised in a Boston household of Enlightenment philosophers who are conducting an experiment to determine whether Africans are intellectually equal to Europeans. The first volume won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
The books are written in an 18th-century style that matches their Revolutionary War setting. Anderson uses the historical context to examine the contradictions of a nation fighting for liberty while practicing slavery. The result is one of the most challenging and rewarding works of young adult fiction published in the 2000s.