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THE ZORG: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
From Pulitzer finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: A notorious slave ship incident that led to the abolition of slavery in the UK and sparked the U.S. abolitionist movement
In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a Dutch word meaning “care”) was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique.
After reaching Africa, the Zorg was captured by a privateer and came under British command. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves and departed in 1781 for Jamaica. But a series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course and running out of water. So a proposition was put forth: Save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves—by throwing dozens of people, starting with women and children, overboard.
What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history—sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States.
Siddharth Kara utilizes primary-source research, gripping storytelling, and painstaking investigation to uncover the Zorg’s journey, the lives and fates of the slaves on board, and the mysterious identity of the abolitionist who finally revealed the truth of what happened on the ship.
Siddharth Kara is an author, researcher, and activist on modern slavery. Kara has written several books and reports on slavery and child labor, including the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Cobalt Red. Kara also won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. He has lectured at Harvard University and held a professorship at the University of Nottingham. He divides his time between Los Angeles and London.
Rights have sold to Transworld in the UK, Editions Paulsen in France, Pischogios in Greece, Nutrimenti in Italy, Hollands Diep in the Netherlands, and Foksal in Poland!
Foreign sales for Cobalt Red:
Arabic/Booktino, Brazil/Rocco, China/Zhejian People’s Publishing House, Germany/HarperCollins, Italy/People, Japan/Daiwa Shobo, Kazakhstan/Mazmundama, Korea/Eco Livre, Poland/Foksal, Spain/Capitan Swing
Praise for The Zorg:
“The Zorg remains a book of great importance and one that will likely become a classic. It takes a respected place within a growing historical literature about the slave ship in general…a potent exposé of the ancient clash between humanity and property.” —Marcus Rediker, The New York Times Book Review
“Mass murder aboard a slave transport, half-forgotten today but an iconic event...A vivid historical footnote, but also a milestone.” —Kirkus
“Based on extensive primary research, this powerful tale about greed and cruelty highlights the nearly forgotten story that launched a key campaign against enslavement. Readers interested in the study of enslavement and maritime history will seek out this title.” —Library Journal
“This remarkable, riveting book about a famous event of nearly two and a half centuries ago finds a raft of new information that generations of historians (myself included) have missed. And the episode involved was not just one more atrocity onboard a slave ship at sea; it was the spark that helped ignite the greatest human rights movement of all time.” —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost
“A compelling, meticulously researched tale told with compassion and clarity, The Zorg reveals the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade and the humanity that led to its demise.” —Hallie Rubenhold, bestselling author of The Five and The Story of a Murder
“The history at the heart of The Zorg is urgent, unflinching, and utterly essential. Siddharth Kara brings overdue attention to stories that demand to be known.” —Dr. Anthony Delaney, author of Queer Georgians and podcast host of After Dark
Publishers Weekly starred review
In this enthralling and elegant history, Pulitzer finalist Kara (Cobalt Red) revisits the notorious 1781 voyage of the British slave ship Zorg, also known as the Zong. Near its destination in Jamaica, the crew threw overboard 132 of the 443 slaves they were transporting, including children and babies, later asserting they did it to conserve drinking water. The investors’ insurance claim for the murdered slaves led to an explosive London court case, and the massacre became an abolitionist rallying cry. Kara makes the incident partly into an age-of-sail epic of bad luck and hubris: delayed for over a month by storms and amateurish navigation mistakes, the ship’s inexperienced captain failed to properly inventory water supplies. But even more so, Kara’s account is a stomach-churning study in slavery’s demented economic calculus as he seeks to prove what many abolitionists charged at the time: that the crew murdered the most weakened slaves just before docking because their insured value was greater than the price they would fetch at market. However, Kara intriguingly pegs as the crime’s mastermind not the captain, but the ship’s only passenger, disgraced former British colonial governor Robert Stubbs, whose sinister earlier dealings in Africa form a major through line of the narrative. The result is both a harrowing glimpse of slavery’s horrors and an incisive investigation into one of history’s most reviled crimes.
Praise for Siddharth Kara and Cobalt Red
“Timely, important, compelling.”—The Los Angeles Times
“Harrowing...a righteous quest to expose injustice.”—New York Times Book Review
“Powerful...heart-wrenching...compelling.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Kara, who traveled the country, entering mines and speaking to workers at every level of the labor chain, exposes slavery, child labor, forced labor, and other ongoing horrors and crimes. Extensively researched, this piercing narrative is muckraking journalism at its finest.”— Booklist (starred review)
“[Siddharth Kara’s] well-written, forcefully argued report exposes the widespread, debilitating human ramifications of our device-driven global society. A horrifying yet necessary picture of exploitation and poverty in the Congo.”—Kirkus (starred review)
“Readers will be outraged and empowered to call for change.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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THE ZORG by Siddharth Kara continues to see phenomenal coverage since publication last month.
In addition to the fantastic New York Times review, the book has just been named one of TIME's 100 Must Read Books of 2025. They say: "Kara's Book reads like a thriller, narrative nonfiction at its finest."
And it is an Amazon Best Book of 2025 in the History category and a B&N Best History Book of the Year.
The book was also the subject of an opinion piece in the New York Times, which says: “Stunning… ‘The Zorg,’ fascinating in its own right, arrives at an interesting moment. The history of Black involvement in the slave trade has often been treated as off limits — inconvenient at best and outright slander at worst. But it has gained traction in recent years…One lesson of ‘The Zorg,’ is that history and people are complex.”
The Minnesota Star Tribune says in their review: "An epic in miniature, The Zorg is one of this year's superlative nonfiction books."
And the book is featured in The New Yorker Briefly Noted, which calls the book a "harrowing history."
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