Keita Ali has nothing: no bank account, no papers, no legal identity. A runner, he has fled home-- a brutal dictatorship that produces the world' s fastest marathoners-- to live as an illegal refugee in a wealthy western nation, surviving on winnings from local races. But the government is cracking down on illegal immigrants, so Keita-- who will be executed if he is deported to his homeland-- goes underground. Now, a series of crises call for him to earn quick money: an unscrupulous businessman targets him, a serious health problem erupts, and, most troublingly, officials in Keita' s native country kidnap his sister, threatening to execute her unless he pays a ransom. As Keita struggles to resolve these problems, he discovers a troubling political connection between his native and his adopted country. The Illegal is a rich, riveting novel that weaves a complex moral and psychological web.
Author of the #1 best-seller The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill is a writer of immense talent-and his literary reputation grows with each new work. Canadian Langston Cane V finds his writing career (and, indeed, his life) in stasis until inspired by his mentor to write about an ancestor who purportedly died fighting alongside John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Traveling to Baltimore, the latter-day Cane delves into history and in so doing awakens to new possibilities. "A remarkable achievement."-Joyce Carol Oates
Aminata Diallo (an amazing literary creation, Literary Review of Canada) is the beguiling heroine of Lawrence Hills SOMEONE KNOWS MY NAME. In it, Hill exquisitely imagines the tale of an eighteenth-century womans life, spanning six decades and three continents. The fascinating story that Hill tells is a work of the soul and the imagination. Aminata is a character who will stir listeners, from her kidnapping from Africa through her journeys back and forth across the ocean.
Enslaved on a South Carolina plantation, Aminata works in the indigo fields and as a midwife. When she is bought by an entrepreneur from Charleston, she is torn from friends and family. The chaos of the Revolutionary War allows her to escape. In British-held Manhattan, she helps pen the Book of Negroes, a list of blacks rewarded for wartime service to the King with safe passage to Nova Scotia. During her travels in Canada, Sierra Leone, and England, Aminata strives for her freedom and that of her people -even when it comes at a price.
In this captivating novel, Hill portrays one womans remarkable spirit and strength in the face of adversity, and he brings to life crucial and little-known chapters in world history.