From its first publication in 2007, Lawrence Hill's masterpiece, The Book of Negroes, has touched readers around the world with its unforgettable story. Now a six-part CBC mini-series starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Louis Gossett Jr., and Ben Chaplin, this beloved novel tells the story of Aminata, brilliantly played by Anajanue Ellis.

Abducted as an eleven-year-old from her village in Africa and enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata survives using midwifery skills learned at her mother’s side. When she has the chance to register her name in the “Book of Negroes,” a historic British military ledger, Aminata secures a spot on a ship sailing from Manhattan to Nova Scotia and eventually sails to Sierra Leone in a back-to-Africa odyssey inspired by historical events.

The winner of numerous awards, The Book of Negroes has become a classic novel of hope, love, despair and survival like none other.

LAWRENCE HILL is a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph. He is the author of ten books, including The Illegal; The Book Of Negroes; Any Known Blood; and Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. He is the winner of various awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize, and is a two-time winner of CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. Hill delivered the North America-wide 2013 Massey Lectures, based on his non-fiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life. He co-wrote the adaptation for the six-part television miniseries The Book of Negroes, which attracted millions of viewers and won eleven Canadian Screen Awards. The recipient of nine honorary doctorates from Canadian universities, Hill served as chair of the jury of the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is a volunteer with Book Clubs for Inmates and the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, and is an honorary patron of Crossroads International, for which he has volunteered for more than thirty-five years and with which he has travelled to Niger, Cameroon, Mali, and Swaziland. A 2018 Berton House resident in Dawson City, he is working on a new novel about the African-American soldiers who helped build the Alaska Highway in northern B.C. and Yukon in 1942–43. He is a Member of the Order of Canada, has been inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame, and in 2019 was named a Canada Library and Archives Scholar. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, and in Woody Point, Newfoundland.

Lawrence Hill's profile page

• OLA Evergreen Award
• Commonwealth Writers Prize, Caribbean and Canada
• CBC Canada Reads