Roots
/ruːts/
/ruːts/
- a long novel (1976) by the US writer Alex Haley, for which he received a special Pulitzer Prize. The story, based on Haley's research into his own family's history, is about an African-American family of slaves. A television version (1977) ran for eight nights on ABC and had an audience of about 100 million, the largest ever. It received nine Emmy awards.