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HarperCollins Announces New Novel by Lawrence Hill
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Toronto; March 30, 2015)
HarperCollinsPublishersLtd announces the upcoming publication of Lawrence Hill’s new novel.
The Illegal will be published on September 1, 2015.
The deal was arranged between Iris Tupholme, Senior Vice President and Executive Publisher of
HarperCollinsPublishersLtd, and Hill’s agent Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.
The author of nine previous works of fiction and non-fiction, Lawrence Hill became a household name
with the 2007 publication of The Book of Negroes. Upon publication, it was met with critical acclaim and
was soon awarded the prestigious Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’
Prize for Overall Best Book. The Book of Negroes then went on to win Canada Reads and has been
published around the world. Most recently, it was adapted as a six-part miniseries that aired on CBC
Television in January 2015.
Lawrence Hill says, “I have been thinking about the lives of undocumented refugees since meeting
Sudanese expatriates in West Berlin in the 1980s. In Canada, the United States and around the world,
millions of people have to survive with a huge question mark over their lives. Will they be deported?
Persecuted? Executed? What do their lives look like while they are hiding in rich nations and trying,
against all odds, to get on with their lives? These questions became my obsession and the inspiration for
The Illegal.”
“Lawrence’s great strength as a novelist is to make important contemporary issues come alive through
vivid storytelling and unforgettable characters,” says Iris Tupholme, Hill’s long-time editor and publisher.
“In The Illegal, he tells the story of a young marathon runner, Keita Ali, fleeing for his life from a
repressive government and forced into hiding. This is the ‘new underground,’ a hidden society made up
of people who are denied the basics of life because they don’t have the necessary paperwork to make
them full citizens. This new novel by Lawrence Hill is a significant contribution to our understanding of
the fate that plagues millions of undocumented migrants to developed nations.”
“It is truly an honour and privilege to present Lawrence’s new novel to Canadian booksellers,” says Leo
MacDonald, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, of HarperCollinsCanada. “With close to one
million copies of his books in print, fans have been eagerly awaiting a new novel from Lawrence.”
Lawrence Hill will be doing an extensive cross-country tour this fall to meet the fans that have been so
supportive throughout his writing career.
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About Lawrence Hill
The Illegal is Lawrence Hill’s fourth novel and tenth book. Hill’s last novel was The Book of Negroes, an
international bestseller and winner of various awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and
CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. He travelled widely to deliver the 2013 Massey Lectures, based on his nonfiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life. He co-wrote the adaptation for the six-part television miniseries of
The Book of Negroes, which was filmed in South Africa and Nova Scotia and aired in 2015 on CBC in
Canada and BET in the United States. He volunteers with Crossroads International, Book Clubs for
Inmates, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society and Project Bookmark Canada. Lawrence Hill lives with his
family in Hamilton, Ontario, and Woody Point, Newfoundland. Visit him online at www.lawrencehill.com
and www.facebook.com/LawrenceHillAuthor.
ABOUT HarperCollinsPublishersLtd
HarperCollinsPublishersLtd is the second-largest consumer book publisher in the world, with operations
in 18 countries. With nearly 200 years of history and more than 65 unique imprints around the world,
HarperCollins publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year, in over 30 languages, and has a
print and digital catalogue of more than 200,000 titles. Writing across dozens of genres, HarperCollins
authors include winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery
and Caldecott Medals and the Man Booker Prize. HarperCollins, headquartered in New York, is a
subsidiary of News Corp and can be visited online at corporate.HC.com.
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