Meet Pulitzer Finalist Siddharth Kara, the Acclaimed Authority on American Slavery—Old and New

Two decades after first encountering the shocking story of a Dutch slave ship, Siddharth Kara has finally told the tale he couldn’t forget. “The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery,” released October 14, 2025, represents a departure for the Pulitzer Prize finalist—his first deep dive into historical slavery after years documenting modern-day exploitation.

The book has already garnered significant critical attention. Adam Hochschild, author of “King Leopold’s Ghost,” called it “remarkable, riveting,” noting that it “finds a raft of new information that generations of historians (myself included) have missed,” according to promotional materials from St. Martin’s Press. He added that the episode wasn’t just another atrocity but rather “the spark that helped ignite the greatest human rights movement of all time.”

A Historical Correction

Kara’s investigation begins with a revelation: for more than two centuries, we’ve gotten the ship’s name wrong. The vessel long known as “the Zong” was actually a Dutch ship called “the Zorg”—which in cruel irony meant “care” or “concern” in Dutch. In late 1780, the ship set sail from the Netherlands, was captured by British privateers during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, and was subsequently crammed with 442 enslaved Africans for transport to Jamaica.

What followed was a nightmare. Dysentery ravaged those aboard. Poor planning resulted in severe water shortages, and navigational errors turned an already perilous voyage into a death trap. Beginning on November 29, 1781, the crew threw 122 people—mostly women and children—through a cabin window into shark-infested waters. Another 10 enslaved people jumped to their deaths in what Kara describes as a final act of resistance.

The resulting legal drama in England’s highest court transformed the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news, forcing Britain to confront a simple but profound question: Were the Africans aboard the Zorg people or cargo?

Critical Acclaim with Scholarly Debate

Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, though not without nuance. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, calling it “enthralling and elegant” and describing it as “both a harrowing glimpse of slavery’s horrors and an incisive investigation into one of history’s most reviled crimes.”

Kirkus Reviews described it as “a vivid historical footnote, but also a milestone,” noting that Kara “opens in Britain, 1780, when trade was hobbled by American rebels and their European allies whose privateers were seizing British ships.”

Library Journal wrote: “Based on extensive primary research, this powerful tale about greed and cruelty highlights the nearly forgotten story that launched a key campaign against enslavement.”

Hallie Rubenhold, bestselling author of “The Five,” called it “a compelling, meticulously researched tale told with compassion and clarity,” noting that “The Zorg reveals the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade and the humanity that led to its demise,” according to St. Martin’s Press promotional materials.

However, a New York Times review offered both praise and scholarly critique. While acknowledging Kara’s “impressive research in the archives of the Royal African Company” and describing the book as “a model of sophisticated research, lucid writing and engaged conscience,” the reviewer suggested that Kara’s conception of causation is “too narrow.” The review argued that claiming the Zorg inspired “the abolition of slavery” is “serious overreach,” pointing out that slavery wasn’t abolished in the British Empire for another 57 years or in the United States for 84 years.

Kara is married to Aditi Shankardass, a British neuroscientist. She leads the Neurophysiology Lab of the Communicative Disorders Department at California State University.

The Times reviewer also noted that nine of the 12 men who founded the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade were Quakers, “among whom a debate about slavery had raged since 1688, long before the killings aboard the Zorg.” Additionally, the review criticized Kara’s “great man” approach for obscuring “the massive resistance of enslaved people themselves.”

Despite these criticisms, the Times concluded that “‘The Zorg’ remains a book of great importance and one that will likely become a classic.”

A Deliberate Stylistic Choice

A reviewer from History Nerds United observed that Kara employs “an ingenious style—understatement,” using “a rather straightforward business explanation” that forces readers to “pull back and remind” themselves “that we are talking about humans.” This mirrors how the ship’s leaders “thought of the people jammed into their holds only as cargo to be sold at the next slave port.”

The reviewer added: “Kara tells this story economically. It is slim in comparison to what this book could have been. This is an observation, not a criticism. I can easily hand this book to anyone, even non-history nerds, and tell them it is an easy read from a prose perspective.”

The Research Journey

In promotional materials for the book, Kara explained that he first came across the shocking tale “around 20 years ago” while “conducting research on Atlantic slavery” for his first book. “The inhumanity that took place on the ship always stuck with me,” he wrote.

As he began researching in earnest, Kara realized that “even though the Zorg was perhaps the most consequential slave ship ever to cross the Atlantic, few people knew about it. Worse still, the existing historical record on the Zorg was filled with inaccuracies, starting with the name of the ship!”

According to Publishers Weekly, Kara studied thousands of ink-blotted pages of archival materials in England and the Netherlands to piece together the Zorg’s journey. He came across a parchment in the British National Archives that revealed “a single moment between one of the Zorg’s crew members and an enslaved African that seemed to distill the entire Atlantic slave trade into a single moment of boundless inhumanity.”

He also retraced the ship’s physical journey. His time in Ghana was particularly impactful. “As I investigated the old forts and castles where ‘Guinea ships’ like the Zorg obtained their ‘cargo’ before carting them across the Atlantic, I understood the true barbarity of the slave trade for the first time,” he wrote in promotional materials.

After publishing four books on modern-day slavery based on his own field research, Kara explained, “I needed a break from the physical and emotional toll taken by years of grim encounters with slaves, child laborers, and those who exploited them.”

The Making of a Modern Slavery Expert

Before turning to historical slavery, Kara established himself as one of the world’s foremost authorities on contemporary exploitation through an impressive body of work that has taken him to more than fifty countries across six continents.

His most recent work prior to “The Zorg” was “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives,” released in January 2023. The book became a New York Times bestseller and was named a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

“Cobalt Red” exposed the brutal conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt mines, where roughly 75 percent of the world’s cobalt—essential for lithium-ion batteries in smartphones, laptops, and electric vehicles—is extracted, often by children working in subhuman conditions.

The Los Angeles Times called it “timely, important, compelling,” while The New York Times Book Review described it as “harrowing…a righteous quest to expose injustice.” The Wall Street Journal praised it as “powerful…heart-wrenching…compelling.”

Adam Hochschild wrote in an endorsement: “With extraordinary tenacity and compassion, Siddharth Kara evokes one of the most dramatic divides between wealth and poverty in the world today. I hope policy-makers on every continent will read this book.”

Jon Krakauer, author of “Into Thin Air,” called it “a riveting, eye-opening, terribly important book that sheds light on a vast ongoing catastrophe. Everyone who uses a smartphone, an electric vehicle, or anything else powered by rechargeable batteries needs to read what Siddharth Kara has uncovered.”

Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review, writing: “A horrifying yet necessary picture of exploitation and poverty in the Congo.” The review noted that Kara “paints a stark portrait of the appalling conditions in the mining villages” and called it “muckraking journalism at its finest.”

However, “Cobalt Red” also drew criticism. A July 2023 review in openDemocracy criticized what it called the book’s “colonial mindset,” arguing that Kara “greatly oversimplifies the analysis into binaries of victims and villains” and portrays Congolese miners as “helpless and suffering.” The review also raised ethical concerns about Kara’s research methods and use of dehumanizing rhetoric.

Foreign Affairs offered a more balanced assessment, noting that Kara “provides a thorough and insightful investigation of the cobalt industry” and “sheds light on the complex and highly decentralized organization of cobalt mining” while revealing “a system of intermediary agents” that allows global technology corporations to “plausibly plead ignorance about the many abuses occurring at the far end of the chain.”

According to his official biography, Kara’s first non-fiction book, “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery,” was published by Columbia University Press in January 2009 and won the 2010 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded to the most outstanding nonfiction book on slavery and abolition. He adapted this work into the feature film “Trafficked.”

His second book, “Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia,” was released by Columbia University Press in October 2012, followed by “Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective,” published in October 2017 and launched at the United Nations.

Background and Academic Career

According to his official biography, Kara was born in Knoxville and received a BA in English and Philosophy from Duke University, where he co-founded the Duke Refugee Action Project, which became the precursor to the prestigious Hart Leadership Program at the Sanford School of Public Policy.

After Duke, Kara worked as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch in New York City for several years, participating in some of the firm’s largest mergers and acquisitions and equity financing transactions. He received an MBA from Columbia University and later earned a law degree from the BPP Law School in London.

After graduating from Columbia, Kara embarked on the first of several long self-funded journeys across the world to research contemporary slavery and child labor. His research travels have taken him to more than fifty countries across six continents.

In fall 2009, Kara became the first Fellow on Human Trafficking with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In spring 2012, he taught the first course on human trafficking at the Harvard Kennedy School. In summer 2020, he was one of 10 experts and scholars awarded the prestigious Global Professorship by the British Academy.

Kara has held academic positions at Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Nottingham, where he served as an Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Kara has appeared extensively in media as an expert on modern slavery, including on the Joe Rogan Experience, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, CNN, Fox News, ABC News, and CNBC. He is a regular contributor to The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern Day Slavery.

A feature film inspired by “Cobalt Red” is currently in pre-production.

Kara is married to Aditi Shankardass, a British neuroscientist who has appeared in media outlets including CNN, ABC News, the Times of India, and the Financial Express to discuss developmental disorders in children. She leads the Neurophysiology Lab of the Communicative Disorders Department at California State University.

Shankardass’s father is celebrity lawyer Vijay Shankardass, whose clients include the Nizam of Hyderabad, author Salman Rushdie, actor Michael Douglas, Amnesty International, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, Penguin Books, and Virgin Group.

Kara divides his time between Los Angeles and London.

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.