Run, Keita, Run

Lawrence Hill has said that The Illegal, his fourth novel, has been on his mind since he first met Sudanese refugees in West Berlin in the 1980s. After that long gestation, the book now seems especially timely. This dystopian contribution to the genre of refugee lit (What Is the What by Dave Eggers, Ru by Kim Thuy) hit bookshelves this fall during the most acute refugee crisis since the end of World War Two.

Readers will recall Hill’s poignant third novel, The Book of Negroes, which won both the Commonwealth Writers and the Rogers Writers’ Trust prizes for its startlingly imagined and dignified protagonist, Aminata Diallo, a girl kidnapped from West Africa and enslaved in the American South. Like Aminata, the protagonist of his new book (male this time) embodies grace, courage and resourcefulness. Keita Ali is incorruptible, kind, but just flawed enough to be real as he struggles to survive as a refugee in the fictional country of Freedom...