Kidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship and prejudice of the new colony prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people. It is a story that no listener, and no reader, will ever forget.
Published in Canada as The Book of Negroes and the basis for the award-winning BET miniseries of the same name.
Lawrence Hill is the author of several novels including Someone Knows My Name, which won the Commonwealth Writersโ Prize and the Rogers Writersโ Trust Fiction Prize and was nominated in the United States for the Huston Wright Legacy Award. In 2015 Hill was appointed to the Order of Canada โfor his contributions as an author and activist who tells the stories of Canadaโs black community and of women and girls in Africa.โ A graduate of the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, he lives in Ontario, Canada.