"Benito Cereno" is a novel by Herman Melville, a fictionalized account about the revolt on a Spanish slavery ship captained by Don Benito Cereno, first published in 1855. Off the coast of Chile, captain Amasa Delano of the American merchant ship Bachelor's Delight visits the San Dominick, a Spanish slave ship apparently in distress. After learning from its captain Benito Cereno that a storm has taken many crewmembers and provisions, Delano offers to help out. He notices that Cereno acts awkwardly passive for a captain and the slaves display remarkably inappropriate behavior, and though this piques his suspicion he ultimately decides he is being paranoid. Employing a third-person narrator who reports Delano's point of view without any correction, the story has become a famous example of unreliable narration.
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York. Family hardships forced him to leave school for various occupations, including shipping as a cabin boy to Liverpool in 1839, a voyage that sparked his love for the sea. A shrewd social critic and philosopher in his fiction, he is considered an outstanding writer of the sea and a great stylist who mastered both realistic narrative and a rich, rhythmical prose.
«Such were the American’s thoughts. They were tranquillizing. There was a difference between the idea of Don Benito’s darkly preordaining Captain Delano’s fate, and Captain Delano’s lightly arranging Don Benito’s. Nevertheless, it was not without something of relief that the good seaman presently perceived his whale-boat in the distance. Its absence had been prolonged by unexpected detention at the sealer’s side, as well as its returning trip lengthened by the continual recession of the goal».
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