This is the novel of the Old South, a world few people knew existed - a world of violence, cruelty, greed, and lust. Mandingo brings to vivid life the sounds, the smells, the terrible reality of the slave-breeding farms and plantations where men and women were mated and bred like cattle. Set in the 1830s around a plantation in Alabama owned by a planter named Maxwell, his son Hammond, and the Mandingo slave Ganymede, or Mede, Mandingo is a tale of cruelty toward the black people of that time and place, detailing the overwhelmingly dehumanizing behavior meted out to the slaves, as well as vicious fights, poisoning, and violent death. When first published in the 1950s, millions of readers found it to be an unforgettable read.