Filmatized in 2013 and the official recipient of three Oscars, Solomon Northup\'s powerful slave narrative \'Twelve Years a Slave\' depicts Nortup\\\'s life as he is sold into slavery after having spent 32 years of his life living as a free man in New York.\nWorking as a travelling musician, Northup goes to Washington D.C, where he is kidnapped, sent to New Orleans, and sold to a planter to suffer the relentless and brutal life of a slave.\nAfter a dozen years, Northup escapes to return to his family and pulls no punches, as he describes his fate and that of so many other black people at the time.\nIt is a harrowing but vitally important book, even today. For further reading on this subject, try \\\'Uncle Tom\\\'s Cabin\\\' by Harriet Beecher Stowe.\nSolomon Northup (c.1807-c.1875) was an American abolitionist and writer, best remembered for his powerful race memoir \\\'Twelve Years a Slave\\\'.\nAt the age of 32, when he was a married farmer, father-of-three, violinist and free-born man, he was kidnapped in Washington D.C and shipped to New Orleans, sold to a planter and enslaved for a dozen years.\nWhen he gained his freedom, he wrote his famous memoir and spent some years lecturing across the US,on behalf of the abolitionist movement.\n\\\'Twelve Years a Slave\\\' was published a year after \\\'Uncle Tom\\\'s Cabin\\\' by Harriet Beecher Stowe and built on the anti-slavery momentum it had developed.\nNorthup\\\'s final years are something of a mystery, though it is thought that he struggled to cope with family life after being freed.