Winner of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction * Finalist for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize * A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2024

'A revelation... Lubrin is one of the finest writers and thinkers of our time.' Maaza Mengiste

'Code Noir is storytelling at its deepest and most intimate.' Dionne Brand

***

A dazzling political tour de force from multi-award-winning author Canisia Lubrin

The original Code Noir was an infamous set of fifty-nine decrees passed by King Louis XIV. The Code enforced strict rules governing the lives of slaves in the French colonies for over a hundred years. Canisia Lubrin's stunning debut brings together fifty-nine linked fictions, riffing on the historical to take an electrifying new look at the present day.

Interspersed with original black-and-white drawings by acclaimed visual artist Torkwase Dyson, this inventive, shape-shifting braid of narratives ranges from contemporary reality to unexpected dystopia, futuristic fantasy to historical adventure. Linked by the determination of individuals to look beyond official decrees, beyond the ruins of the past, and to create meaning - and freedom - for themselves, the fictions of Code Noir combine immense literary and political force in unforgettable, multi-layered fragments.

Dazzling, groundbreaking fiction from multi-award winner Canisia Lubrin, one of Canada's most exciting and admired new writers

About the Author

Canisia Lubrin's poetry books include Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin's work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and others. Lubrin has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, Simon Fraser University, Literature Colloquium Berlin, and 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. Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, and is poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart.

Reviews

'Code Noir is a revelation... This book sings in searing language, telling stories that bristle and challenge, comfort and question.' Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, short-listed for the Booker Prize

'This single book holds a universe. Code Noir is monumental and intimate, rigorous and tender. Canisia Lubrin is one of the most extraordinary writers working today.' Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

'The collection displays tremendous stylistic breadth... The overall effect is a dizzying, disorienting view of "history's wide grave".' The New Yorker

'An interconnected allegory... Lubrin's iconoclastic flights subvert hierarchies and cover continents and aeons of pain.' The Miramichi Reader (starred review)

'Crackles with life and humor... In its formal inventiveness and sheer audaciousness, Code Noir is unlike anything else that I've ever read. Lubrin is a force.' Christina Sharpe, author of In the Wake

'Code Noir is storytelling at its deepest and most intimate.... These stories are magic, and you must enter them as if you, too, are wondrous.' Dionne Brand, author of A Map to the Door of No Return

'This is a brilliant work of literature by a virtuosic writer, and you must read it.' Anakana Schofield, author of Malarky

'A singular achievement.' Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of How to Pronounce Knife

'A book that radiates life - insistent, unbounded life... A virtuosic assembling of genres, voices, and experiences...with lines gripping the heart and stories suffused with beauty and tenderness.' David Chariandy, author of Brother

'Brilliant, challenging, and ecstatic... A dazzling achievement.' The Globe and Mail

'Visceral, disruptive... Astonishing... Canisia Lubrin has turned her attention to fiction in her striking new work, Code Noir... Play[ing] with form, time, and polyvocality... Grounded in the making and unmaking of historical narratives of Black diasporic experience.' Winnipeg Free Press

Book Information
ISBN 9781836432098
Author Canisia Lubrin
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Oneworld Publications
Publisher Oneworld Publications
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 135mm * 27mm