The Illegal - Softcover

The #1 National Bestselling novel about family, identity and belonging

Winner of CBC’s Canada Reads

A CBC, Globe and Mail and National Post Best Book of the Year

Keita Ali is on the run. Like every boy on the impoverished island of Zantoroland, running is all Keita’s ever wanted to do. Running means respect and riches—until Keita is targeted for his father’s outspoken political views and discovers he must run for his survival.

He signs on with a notorious marathon agent, but when things turn sour Keita flees to Freedom State—a wealthy nation bent on deporting the tens of thousands of refugees living within its borders. Deportation would mean death, so Keita trains in secret, eluding capture, surfacing only occasionally to earn money in road races. And soon he is running not only for his own life, but for his sister’s life too.

Fast moving, suspenseful and compelling, The Illegal captures in Keita’s story one of the most pressing issues of our time. It casts a satirical eye on people who have turned their backs on undocumented refugees struggling to survive in a nation that does not want them. Hill’s depiction of life on the borderlands of society reveals the endurance of the human spirit and urges us to consider the plight of the unseen and the forgotten who live among us.

LAWRENCE HILL is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of The Book of Negroes, which was made into a six-part TV mini-series. His previous novels, Some Great Thing and Any Known Blood, became national bestsellers. Hill’s non-fiction work includes Blood: The Stuff of Life, the subject of his 2013 Massey Lectures, and Black Berry, Sweet Juice, a memoir about growing up black and white in Canada. Lawrence Hill volunteers with Crossroads International, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society and Project Bookmark Canada. He lives with his family in Hamilton, Ontario, and Woody Point, Newfoundland.

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