Canisia Lubrin’s first novel, Code Noir, was published this week (February 2024) by Knopf Canada. Deborah Dundas (Toronto Star) writes that Code Noir  “subverts the infamous code dictating the life of slaves decreed by King Louis XIV of France.” 

Description: Canisia Lubrin’s debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure is deceptively simple: it departs from the infamous real-life “Code Noir,” a set of historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original Code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.

Ranging in style from contemporary realism to dystopia, from futuristic fantasy to historical fiction, this inventive, shape-shifting braid of stories exists far beyond the enclosures of official decrees. This is a timely, daring, virtuosic book by a young literary star. The stories are accompanied by black-and-white drawings—one at the start of each fiction—by acclaimed visual artist Torkwase Dyson.

Canisia Lubrin was born in St. Lucia. Presently, she lives in Whitby and is poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. Her books include Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin’s work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize, the Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Stars prize, and others. Finalist for the Trillium Award for Poetry and Governor General’s Literary Award, Lubrin has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, Civitella Ranieri in Italy, Simon Frasier University, Literature Colloquium Berlin, Queen’s University, and Victoria College at University of Toronto. She studied at York University and the University of Guelph, where she now coordinates the Creative Writing MFA in the School of English & Theatre Studies. In 2021, Lubrin received a Windham-Campbell prize for poetry, and the Globe & Mail named her Poet of the Year. Code Noir: Metamorphoses is her debut fiction, and includes stories listed for the Journey Prize (2019, 2020), Toronto Book Award (2018) and the Shirley Jackson Award (2021).

For full article, see https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/669724/code-noir-by-canisia-lubrin/9780735282216 and https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/authors/2199132/canisia-lubrin

Also see https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/i-ve-always-been-attracted-to-things-that-are-a-little-bit-different-the-writer/article_041dd16a-bc69-11ee-a72f-e3fee352eb75.html