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Lawrence Hill
The Book of Negroes
HarperCollins
Abducted as an eleven-year old child from West Africa, forced to walk for months to the sea, Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. A skilled midwife and able to read and write – thanks to covert tutoring by a fellow slave – she would eventually forge her way to freedom, serve the British in the Revolutionary War, and register her name in “The Book of Negroes,” a hand-written ledger detailing the names, ages, and backgrounds of black people in North America. Freed she and other Loyalist slaves request permission to resettle in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own. Aminata’s eventual return to Sierra Leone – passing shops carrying thousands of slaves bound for America – is an engrossing account of an obscure but important chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.
Lawrence Hill published works of both fiction and non-fiction last year: his third novel, The Book of Negroes, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; and The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq (written with Joshua Key). An essayist, documentary writer, former reporter and parliamentary correspondent, Lawrence is a volunteer with Canadian Crossroads International. He lives in Burlington with his wife and five children.
Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes is a work of epic, passionate storytelling, where history charts its course through the singular life of a remarkable woman. Aminata Diallo refuses to be one among the nameless, nor to let the nameless disappear into the invisible spaces of history. “Fear no man and come to know him,” Aminata's father tells her early in the novel, and Lawrence Hill fearlessly follows this edict. A provocative, humane journey not only across oceans and back again, into homelands both stolen and reclaimed, but into the unfathomable depths of the soul of another.
-2007 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury)
(Kevin Major, Kim Moritsugu, and Madeleine Thien)
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Robert Hough
The Culprits
Random House Canada
A broken man working the night shift in a meaningless job, Hank Wallins sleepwalks through life, too scarred by a tragic love affair to try again. After a madman pushes him into the path of an oncoming subway train and he narrowly escapes, Hank vows to change his life. On FromRussiaWithLove.com he meets Anya, a young, slightly cross-eyed Russian beauty, and soon sends her an airline ticket to Toronto. When a troubling letter from St. Peterburg arrives on their doorstep, Hank unwittingly, and out of love for Anya, finds himself funding a terrorist scheme. A twisted novel of globalized love, disorder and betrayal, The Culprits moves between a lonely man in Toronto and Chechan terrorists in Russia.
Robert Hough began his career as a magazine writer, mostly for Toronto Life and Saturday Night. He is the author of three novels, including The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, which is currently in development for a major motion picture; and The Stowaway. His work has been shortlisted for both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the Trillium Book Award. Hough’s latest novel, The Culprits , is a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize ( Canada and Caribbean region).
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Nancy Huston
Fault Lines
McArthur & Company
Sol is a gifted but also terrifying six year-old; his mother believes he is destined for greatness. He has a birthmark, like his dad, his grandmother, and great-grandmother. But when they all make an unexpected trip to Germany, terrible secrets emerge about their family’s story during World War II. The story sweeps from 1945, where a young girl, Kristina, stolen as a baby from the Ukraine, is living with what she thinks is her real German family during the collapse of Germany; to Sol, Kristina's great-grandson, a Californian of the 21st century, a precious Bush-admiring kid fascinated by grotesque images of dead Iraqis on the Internet. Fault Lines unwinds back through time to tell the tale of four generations of one family told through the perspective of six-year-olds from each generation.
Nancy Huston was born in Calgary. Her pervious books have won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, and the Governor General’s Literary Award. Wrigint in both French and English, she translates her work herself and is the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a play, children’s books, and screenplays. Falut Lines is her eleventh novel. She lives in Paris with her husband, the writer Tzvetan Todorov, and their two children.
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Shaena Lambert
Radiance
Random House Canada
In 1952 eighteen-year-old Hiroshima survivor Keiko Kitigawa arrives in New York City for surgery to cut away the scar marring her lovely face. Sponsored by The Hiroshima Project, Keiko is expected to be a media darling, “The Hiroshima Maiden,” selected for her beauty and for the talent she briefly revealed to Project doctors in Japan for putting words to the inexpressible horrors she has witnessed. But the Keiko who arrives in America does not perform as scripted. Frustrated by her recalcitrance, the Project presses Keiko’s suburban host mother, Daisy Lawrence, into duty, tasking her with drawing out the girl’s horrific story, the one they need for the media circuit. When Daisy reluctantly agrees, she must fight to enter Keiko’s sphere of intimacy, and is shocked by what she learns there.
Shaena Lambert is a novelist, short story writer, and teacher. She is the author of the story collection The Falling Woman, which was short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Award. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in many prominent journals and magazines, including Toronto Life, Image ( Dublin), and The Journey Prize Anthology. Lambert lives in Vancouver with her husband and two children. Radiance is her first novel.
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M.G. Vassanji
The Assassin’s Song
Doubleday Canada
Karsan Dargawalla is next in line after his father to assume the lordship of the thirteenth-century Sufi shrine of Pirbaag, to be the highest spiritual authority in their region of Western India. But Karsan longs to be just “ordinary.” On a whim, he applies to study at Harvard, and when he is accepted, he can’t resist the opportunity – though this means profound disappointment for his father and heartbreak for his mother. Soon the intellectual excitement and discoveries of his new life compel him to abdicate his succession to the throne. But even as he succeeds in his “ordinary life” – becoming a professor, marrying and having a son, leading a charmed suburban existence in British Columbia – his heritage continues to haunt him. Finally when a personal tragedy strikes in Canada, and Pirbaag is devastated by communal violence, he is drawn back across thirty years of separation and silence to discover what, if anything, is left for him in India.
M. G. Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. Before coming to Canada in 1978, he attended MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in theoretical nuclear physics. While working as a research associate at the University of Toronto he began writing stories and a novel. In 1989, he published his first novel, The Gunny Sack. Vassanji’s eighth work of fiction, The Assassin’s Song, was a finalist for last year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. A two-time recipient of the Giller Prize, Vassanji lives in Toronto.
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