Benito Cereno is a novella set in 1799 off the coast of Chile. An American sealing captain, Amasa Delano, sees a Spanish merchant ship in apparent distress and goes aboard to help. He finds its captain, Benito Cereno, strangely troubled, and a large cargo of enslaved Africans under the watch of Cereno's attendant.
The story is told largely through Delano's trusting eyes, and the reader slowly senses that something is wrong. It is a tense, subtle study of perception, prejudice and the ways people fail to see what is before them.