Madman's Drum

About this book

A slave trader murders a man and steals his drum. The object passes into his household, where the consequences of that violence spread through the lives of people who never witnessed the crime. Not a single sentence carries the story.

Lynd Ward builds this tragic family history entirely from wood engravings, using sharp light, long shadows and expressions that can change the meaning of a scene. Published in 1930, it is one of the major early wordless novels. The drum gives the narrative its haunting continuity, turning an act of theft into a burden inherited across generations.