Alex Haley Biography and latest books by Alex Haley

Alex Haley, an African-American writer, script-writer and a novelist is best known for his work Roots. This novel became an international bestseller. However before Roots he co-authored the book The Autobiography of Malcolm X which also turned out to be a bestseller and also found a place in the 10 most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Born on August 11, 1921 in Ithaca, New York, he was the oldest in the family with two younger brothers and a sister. He grew up in Henning, Tennessee until the family moved back to Ithaca when he was five years old. His father was a World War I Veteran and later on became a professor in agriculture in Cornell University.

He joined the Coast Guard at the age of 18. It was during this time in the Pacific Theater of operation that he learned the art of writing stories. Eventually after retirement from the Coast Guard he pursued his writing career and later on became the Senior Editor of Reader’s digest.

Haley’s first book The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965. Haley first met Malcolm in 1960 when he was writing an article for Reader’s Digest on The Nation of Islam. He wrote the book after interviewing Malcolm for more than 30 times from 1963 to 1965. The book basically was about Malcolm’s transformation from being a street criminal to a National Spokesperson for The Nation of Islam.

Then came the year 1976, where his critically acclaimed book Roots: The Saga of an American Family was published. It took him 10 years of research and traveling to finally come up with this novel. The novel talked about his family’s history spanning a lifetime of seven generation starting with the story of Kunta Kinte who was captured from Gambia and taken to Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave.

This novel was very well received by the critics and eventually it was published into 37 languages. In the year 1977, he won the National Book Award and a special award from the Pulitzer Board for this novel. The same year, the book was adapted into a television miniseries which reached a record-breaking viewer of 130 million people. The book was introduced as a new course in more than 500 American colleges and universities. It also sold more than million copies in one year.

Following the success of Roots, he wrote some other books in his later years. These includes a biography of Frank Willis, a history on the town of Henning, a novel called A Different Kind of Christmas, and Queen which was completed by David Stevens and published in 1993 after the death of Alex Haley.

In the year 1987, he moved from Beverly Hills, California to his family home state Tennessee. On February 10, 1992, Haley died of a heart attack in Seattle at Swedish Medical Hospital Centre.

However, despite the critical success of his novel Roots, there have been doubts surrounding this novel and some claims it was just a work of his imaginations.

Submitted by: Precious Pheirim