Lawrence Hill is the son of American immigrants – a black father and a white mother – who came to Canada the day after they married in 1953 in Washington, D.C. Hill was greatly influenced by his parents’ work in the human rights movement. His 2007 novel The Book of Negroes was produced as a TV miniseries with the CBC. It also won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and both CBC Radio’s Canada Reads and Radio-Canada’s Combat des livres. His fourth novel, The Illegal, was published in September 2015.

The Illegal

Keita Ali is on the run. He is desperate to flee Zantoroland, a mountainous black island that produces the fastest marathoners in the world. Keita signs on with notorious marathon agent Anton Hamm, who provides Keita with a chance to run the Boston marathon in return for a huge cut of the winning purse. But when Keita fails to place among the top finishers, rather than being sent back to his own country, he goes into hiding in Freedom State – a wealthy nation that has elected a government bent on deporting the refugees living within its borders in the community of AfricTown.

CBC Books: Film Rights to the Ilegal

Canadian Living: Lawrence Hill on his new book

CBC Video Interview: The Illegal: Lawrence Hill’s new book – a refugee’s life on the run