Alex Haley

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley ( born August 11, 1921 in Ithaca, New York, † February 10, 1992 in Seattle, Washington) was an American writer. He became known worldwide for his novel Roots, in which he told previously only orally transmitted story of his ancestor, Kunta Kinte starting with, who was reportedly kidnapped in 1767 in present-day Gambia and taken as a slave in the then British colony of Maryland. For Roots, he received the 1977 Pulitzer Prize. In the same year the eponymous television series aired.

Life and work

Haley grew up in the southern United States and served from 1939 to 1959 in the Coast Guard. The same time he began to write short stories and articles. He worked as a journalist, inter alia, for Reader 's Digest and The Saturday Evening Post. Between 1963 and 1965 he co-authored with Malcolm X whose autobiography. He claims to be researched for twelve years Roots, and the book was published in 1976 and first broadcast in the following year television series have been tremendously successful. Roots has been translated into 37 languages ​​, the film saw about 130 million people. For the first time to a wider public became aware of how history dating back to Americans of African descent.

In the eighties, Haley began working on a second novel, which dealt with a different branch of his family tree, his grandmother the "Queen", who was the daughter of a slave and her white master. Haley died shortly before the completion of the manuscript. It was completed by David Stevens and published under the title of Alex Haley 's Queen. This book was also made ​​into a film in 1993.

Plagiarism and falsification allegations

From 1978, Haley took reputation by accusations of plagiarism damage. After he was accused of having taken more than 80 passages from the book The African by Harold Courlander, he committed himself in an out- of-court settlement to pay $ 650,000. 1988 Margaret Walker sued him because he had infringed copyright in her novel Jubilee. That action was dismissed. The literary work Haley was not attacked in other points. Thus, the Nation of Islam, he was accused of falsifying statements of historical facts by the family of Malcolm X and members.

Works

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965 ISBN 0-345-35068-5 (German: Malcolm X, The Autobiography ISBN 3-926529-14-8 )
• Roots: The Saga of an American Family, ISBN 0-440-17464-3 1976 (German: Roots - "Roots" ISBN 3-596-22448-9 )
• A Different Kind of Christmas, 1988 ISBN 0-385-26043-1
• Alex Haley's Queen: The Story of an American Family, 1993 ( completed by David Stevens after Haley's death) ISBN 0-330-33307-0 (German: Alex Haley 's Queen ISBN 3- 426-19340 -X)
• Mama Flora 's Family, 1998 ( completed by David Stevens after Haley's death) ISBN 0-440-61409-0