"Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. Crossing water never improved my life, always worsened it. If you, Dear Reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water, seize your freedom by any means necessary . . . and cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Especially if it's from the light of the dying sun. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but the way that it spills across the water in the late afternoon constitutes nothing short of sleight of hand. . . . What benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel?"

Lawrence is the author of several novels and works of non-fiction, including Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada; Any Known Blood; Some Great Thing; Women of Vision: The Story of the Canadian Negro Women's Association and a children's book, Trials and Triumphs: The Story of African Canadians. Lawrence Hill lives in Burlington, Ontario.

"A mesmerizing, utterly compelling journey into the heart of slavery, The Book of Negroes is destined to join the great classics of our times. Inside a world of brutality, a powerful spirit is evoked with such sensitivity and lyricism that it is impossible not to be deeply moved, and impossible to stop reading. Lawrence Hill has embodied the narrator completely, and I in turn felt intimately connected to this wondrous woman. Stylistically flawless, thematically layered and historically fascinating, this novel is a masterpiece."

- Edeet Ravel, author of A Wall of Light and Look for Me

"The Book of Negroes is a novel that should be sung, rather than read. It is a song of worship, in praise of the taste of an orange, the smell of a newborn; and it is a lament to the horrors we are capable of inflicting on each other, no matter what the colour of our skin. But above all else it is a love song urging us to celebrate our romance with our own dear humanity. "Ba means river," Lawrence Hills' powerful character Aminata writes in The Book of Negroes. "It also means mother." When I finished this novel, I held my children close and cried over them, because this novel was a heartbreaking reminder that they are the river through my life, just as much as I am the river through theirs, and this is a river that will continue to flow long after we are gone. The Book of Negroes is not only a lesson on where we came from, but a warning about the future, a future that, with vigilance, we might avoid. It is a courageous, challenging, and beautiful book."

- Gail Anderson-Dargatz, author of The Cure for Death by Lightning

"Lawrence Hill, a cultural and spiritual descendant of West African griots, has used his vast storytelling talents to create an epic story that spans three continents. Book of Negroesrecites the pain, misery, and liberation of one African woman, Aminata Diallo, who was stolen from her homeland and sold into American slavery. Through Aminata, Hill narrates the terrifying story of slavery and puts at the centre a female experience of the African Diaspora. I wept upon reading this story. Book of Negroes is courageous, breathtaking, simply brilliant."

- Afua Cooper, author of The Hanging of Angélique and Copper