Lawrence Hill Wins Commonwealth Prize

Toronto author Lawrence Hill has captured the main Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for his novel The Book of Negroes.

Hill’s book tells the true story of a Malian woman’s journey from enslavement in Africa to bondage in South Carolina and finally back to Africa.

Hill was handed the prize on Monday in Cape Town, South Africa, where he’s attending a literary festival. Writer Lawrence Hill will get to meet the Queen after winning the main Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. (Lisa Sakulensky/HarperCollins Canada)

“It’s particularly good to receive the prize in South Africa,” Hill told the Guardian newspaper, “because its history mirrors my protagonist’s journey from oppression to liberation.”

The novel had already garnered the regional Commonwealth Writers’ prize for best book.

Hill, who will be getting a $19,300 Cdn award, says his story is now available in the U.S. under the title Someone Knows My Name. The title was altered “because the publishers thought ‘Negro’ was an incendiary term.”

The writer joins another African-Canadian author on the Commonwealth big winners’ list: Austin Clarke, whose novel The Polished Hoe won in 2003.

In earning the prize, Hill has also been invited to an audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

“I think it should be fun, particularly because my leading character also meets the British monarch in England to appeal for the end of slavery,” noted Hill.

CBC