Students in McMaster’s Common Reading Program will dive into Lawrence Hill’s award-winning novel The Book of Negroes this fall.

The program, described as a “huge book club, academic training program and social connector all in one,” sees hundreds of incoming students read, study and discuss a piece of literature.

Students have the opportunity to discuss the book with each other online.

Published in 2007, The Book of Negroes tells the story of an African woman named Aminata Diallo who is kidnapped from Africa and sold into slavery in the southern U.S. She later makes her way to Halifax and, finally, to England at the turn of the 19th century.

The novel won the 2007 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. It was the winning selection for CBC Radio’s Canada Reads 2009, in which journalist Avi Lewis championed the book.

Lawrence Hill, a former writer-in-residence at McMaster, will be on campus September 3 to speak with students at a Welcome Week event.

Filming for a TV miniseries based on the novel will begin this fall in South Africa.

Registration for the Common Reading Program is available here.