Historical fiction based on the Zong Massacre. If you don't know what that is, look it up.
D'Aguiar has added a captive slave girl to the narrative as a main character to highlight issues that became legacy of colonalization and capitalism: the brutal way slaves were treated, how free people were ripped from their homes and sold into slavery in the name of capitalism and greed, the toxic white patriarchy of the time, and how justice wasn't really justice.

D'Aguiar is a poet first, then a novelist, and it shows in his writing style.