Roots cover art

Roots

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Roots

By: Alex Haley
Narrated by: Avery Brooks
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Tracing his ancestory through six generations - slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lawyers and architects - back to Africa, Alex Haley discovered a sixteen-year-old youth, Kunta Kinte. It was this young man, who had been torn from his homeland and and in torment and anguish brought to the slave markets of the New World, who held the key to Haley's deep and distant past.

©2011 Alex Hayley (P)2011 Random House Audio Go Classics Fiction Historical Fiction Heartfelt Inspiring Scary Thought-Provoking Tear-jerking

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Uncle Tom's Cabin cover art
The Autobiography of Malcolm X cover art
Twelve Years a Slave cover art
The Color Purple cover art
Inside the Gas Chambers cover art
Mindhunter cover art
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl cover art
Jubilee, 50th Anniversary Edition cover art
The Indigo Girl cover art
North and South cover art
Around the Way Girl cover art
We Hope for Better Things cover art
Kindred cover art
The Winds of War cover art
Sackett's Land: The Sacketts cover art
The Personal Librarian cover art
All stars
Most relevant
I remember as a teenager watching Roots on the TV in my NW London Irish home. I went to an ethnically diverse school in Wembley and I was profoundly impacted by the series along with my friends of Afro Caribbean descent for whom the real history of their ancestors was being told to them for the first time. Not for them the Tudors and Stuart’s and the English, white history we were being taught. A school friend was so inspired by Haley that he too researched his ancestry all the way back through Jamaica and Ghana. I read the book and never forgot the details of Kunta and Kizzy’s story. I am now in my mid 50’s and listening to the audio book has brought back all those feelings I had as a 15 year old. I cried again as I listened to the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery and the prejudice and discrimination suffered by generations of black people. I listen to the news stories coming out of America about the Black Lives Matter movement and the lack of societal progress and I wonder what Alex Haley would make of it if he were alive.

Timeless

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I red this book ages go, seen both Tv series and had a hankering to read it again, but lost my copy so used a credit and listened. Absolutely fabulous, excellent narration, so beautifully read. Enjoyed every word, laughed and cried with the slaves all over again. Horrified anew about how these people and thousands like them were treated. Everyone should read or listen to this.

Amazing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Despite having seen the TV series as a teenager, this book reading really brought history to life. Should be on every school syllabus alongside the Anne Frank story. A wonderful reading that often left me staying in the car after reaching a destination just to hear a little more of this incredible story. This book alone is worth the audible membership.

Not to be missed

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
My memories of the TV show for roots are obviously faded and I approached this book with trepidation expecting to get something filled with (justifiable) hate and emotional trauma. But in the end I think this is far more a story of hope and triumph than it is of bitterness and human suffering.

Alex Haley's story covers such an amazing timescale of Afro-American history and Avery Brooks has given a stunning performance.

Nothing like I imagined

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I watched the series when it was original lay released. I read the book several years later. And ow I have listened to the stories.

Reading was wonderfully done and it was even better than my own imagination could muster.

Thank you Mr Haley and your team.

Powerful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews