Code Noir

Canisia Lubrin

Knopf

Synopsis

Here is groundbreaking, dazzling debut fiction from one of Canada’s most exciting and admired writers.

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.

This book may also be available at the TIFA Festival Bookstore.

About the Author

Canisia Lubrin
Canisia Lubrin is a poet, writer, editor and professor who works across genres. The author of Code Noir, The Dyzgraphxst, Bright Machine, and The World After Rain, Lubrin is the recipient of a 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Griffin Poetry Prize, Derek Walcott Prize, and Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, among other distinctions. She is the poetry editor at McClelland & Steward and coordinator of the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Guelph. 

Read more about Canisia Lubrin

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