I recommend Blonde Roots, a novel by Bernardine Evaristo. In this book, the slave trade is reversed and Africans enslave Europeans. It is a brutal look at the slave trade, prejudice, and inequality. No one benefits when one group is enslaved. All suffer. The author was born in England to an English mother and a Nigerian father. It allows her a painful clarity.
It is especially fascinating to read with Barack Obama as our president. May each person have the freedom to fulfill their potential and desires, and may brutality end in each country, on every continent and on the seas between.