Click here to read full excerpt of The Book of Negroes (PDF)
Nova Scotia Archives & Records Management: Book of Negroes
Fabrizio’s Return by Mark Frutkin. A magical novel of about faith, and about having the courage to follow one’s true path. It’s hard to believe how overlooked this novel has been in the Canadian literary landscape. It is very close to a perfect novel.
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway. Wrenchingly beautiful. Perfectly narrated. An incredibly wise and astute decision to deliver the story of the brutal, murderous siege of Sarajevo without lapsing into descriptions of the various ethnicities of the antagonists. Somehow, avoiding this morass helps the story insist on the moral question underneath it all: how could human beings do this to each other? This is quite likely the only novel that could lead me to love a sniper.
Coventry by Helen Humphreys. A touching story of love and loss in Coventry, England, during the two world wars. The madly intense bombing of Coventry in the Second World War is convincingly and thoroughly rendered in this short, lyrical novel.
The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews. What a wonderful, energetic, brilliant portrait of two messed up teenagers and their equally messed up aunt. Gotta love ‘em. Gotta love Miriam for writing this sad, gritty and hilarious novel. It’s not easy to do sad and hilarious on the same page, and it seems that Miriam is nailing it on almost every page she writes.
Cockroach by Rawi Hage. True, it was nominated for four major Canadian literary prizes in 2008. But in case you haven’t turned to it yet — do so. Roll over, Franz Kafka, and make room for the only 21st-century writer I know who is sufficiently ambitious and brilliant to turn a protagonist into a cockroach. An unflinching portrait of the life of a poor immigrant in Montreal. This is an important novel, brilliantly written.
The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear. This first novel came out in 2007, and deserves wider attention. A fabulous premise, and written with lyricism, intelligence and heart, about a Japanese-Canadian woman working in the Undeliverable Mail Office (for orphaned letters and keepsakes) and trying to track down the Romanian refugee who has disappeared from her life after befriending her at work.
Soucouyant by David Chariandy. This is a most promising first novel set in a Caribbean-Canadian household in Toronto suburb of Scarborough. I am already looking forward to David Chariandy’s next novel, given that Soucouyant is so original and engaging.
 |
Anything from the African Guitar Summit, which delivers the ebullient joy of West African guitar music. | ||
 |
Every Day I Have the Blues, with singer Joe Williams fronting the Count Basie band. Can’t beat it for energy and passion. | ||
 |
My Own Eyes, sung by Mavis Staples. Earthy, alive, and the sort of song Aminata would have loved, had she lived long enough to hear it. | ||
 |
Fields of Gold, as sung by Eva Cassidy. Again, this song hints at the sadness and beauty that I imagine Aminata to carry in her heart. | ||
 |
People Get Ready by Eva Cassidy. The idea of the train coming to liberate people evokes the image of the Underground Railroad, in my mind. This 19th-century phenomenon took place decades after my protagonist left this world, but it speaks to the idea of migration and liberation so common to African peoples around the world. | ||
By Lawrence Hill
HarperCollins Canada
Lawrence Hill’s gripping novel features a woman on an amazing journey in the 1700s and 1800s. Although her life is shaped by slavery, Aminata Diallo survives and even transcends adversity.
Over the course of this epic novel, Aminata is transformed into a storyteller extraordinaire. She spins the astonishing tale of her remarkable travels from Africa to America and back again. Along the way, a sojourn in Nova Scotia illuminates a long-neglected chapter in Canadian history.
Aminata’s autobiography — or, in her words, “ghost story” — begins with her idyllic childhood in West Africa. Happy times are cut short when she is abducted at age 11, placed in chains, taken across the sea and forced into slavery at an indigo plantation in South Carolina.
But Aminata is a survivor and this is just one chapter in her remarkable life story. In a fitting twist for a book featured on Canada Reads, Aminata discovers that literacy just might be her ticket to a new life.
Following its release in 2007, Lawrence Hill’s compelling blend of history and fiction won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in 2008.
The Book of Negroes is being defended on Canada Reads by Avi Lewis.
Lawrence Hill
Author of The Book of Negroes
Lawrence Hill’s fiction and non-fiction books have received glowing reviews, won numerous awards and brought him a legion of fans.
Hill’s writing often explores issues of identity and belonging, as in his first two novels: Any Known Blood (1997) and Some Great Thing (1992), which was read on CBC Radio’s Between the Covers.
His bestselling memoir, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada (2001), describes the lives of his black father and white mother, who emigrated from the U.S. to Canada.
The Book of Negroes, Hill’s third novel, was selected as one of the year’s best books by the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen and Quill & Quire. Published as Someone Knows My Name in the U.S., the book has proven equally popular south of the border.
Hill began his writing career as a reporter for the Globe and Mail and the Winnipeg Free Press. He has won a National Magazine Award, as well as an American Wilbur Award for his film documentary, Seeking Salvation: A History of the Black Church in Canada.
His most recent non-fiction book, The Deserter's Tale: the Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq (2007), was co-written with Joshua Key and released in Canada, the U.S., Australia and numerous European countries.
Hill grew up in Don Mills, Ontario, and now lives in Burlington, Ontario.
In the mid 1970s, Lawrence spent a year travelling in Europe and writing short stories. He ended up in a French mountain village called Villard de Lans, where he washed dishes in a hotel restaurant. Later he published one of his first stories, and, in a boldly amateurish move, declared in his one-line bio that he had once been a dishwasher in France. However, a typo worked its way into the printed version and the contributors' note said he had worked as a "fishwasher" in France. Sounded even more exotic!
Between his last year of high school and his first year of university, Lawrence washed floors at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. He only had about four floors to wash, and could do that in about 90 minutes, working at a leisurely pace. But he had to stretch the 90 minutes of work over an eight-hour shift, because Sunnybook Hospital floor washers were strictly forbidden from appearing to have nothing to do. He learned to hide in the rooms of sleeping geriatric patients, behind their doors, positioning the mirror on their food carts in such a way that he could see the reflection of any nurse or hospital official about to enter the room. He read Catch 22 in this way, as well as a number of French novelists. Never once got caught.
