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Published Jan 1999
512 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
Spanning five generations, sweeping across a century and a half of almost unknown history, this acclaimed and unexpectedly funny novel is the story of a man seeking himself in the mirror of his family's past.
There were Canes in Canada before the United States erupted into civil war. Their roots are deep, their legacy is rich, but Langston Cane V knows little of his heritage. He is thirty-eight, divorced, and childless and has just been fired for sabotaging a government official's speech. The eldest son of a white mother and prominent black father, Langston feels more acutely than ever the burden of his illustrious family name and his racially mixed heritage. To be black in a white society is hard enough; to be half-black, half-white is to have no identity at all. Or so Langston believes. After a run-in with his father, Langston takes off for his feisty aunt's house in Baltimore, where he embarks on a remarkable quest for his family's past.
It's said that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, but to Langston, history offers not condemnation but reprieve. For when he stumbles across a treasure trove of family documents, he sets off on a journey through time that will lead him back to the famous antislavery raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and the great-great-grandfather who fought beside John Brown. He rediscovers the long line of relatives who have battled for racial justice, decade after decade. He finds passion, dignity, and courage--and, at last, by unearthing and giving voice to those who came before him, he finds himself.
"His straightforward, good-humored prose, however, seems too deferent to the richness of the story being told. A touch of lyricism would limber up this lengthy work." - Publishers Weekly.
"Hill's affable narrative voice, spiced with wit and humor, makes Cane's quest a delightful one....within Any Known Blood are at least five more stories dying to be told." - The New York Times.
"Lawrence Hill is on to something new; a literary examination of psyche and bones and flesh. History and the imagination of this young author surge vibrantly to define, over generations, the true meaning of life. Any Known Blood becomes more than a history of lives that might normally be lost, and is instead its new interpretation." - Austin Clarke.
"Any Known Blood is a remarkable achievement. Here is an immensely readable novel, populated with sympathetic yet realistic characters. It deals sensitively, yet often humorously, with one of the most compelling issues of our time in North America -- the ever-shifting, ever-problematic relationship between the races. Lawrence Hill is a wonderfully talented writer and Any Known Blood will be one of the talked-of novels of the year." - Joyce Carol Oates.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Hill is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction. In 2005, he won his first literary honor: a National Magazine Award for the article "Is Africa's Pain Black America's Burden?" published in The Walrus. His first two novels were Some Great Thing and Any Known Blood. His first non-fiction work to attract national attention was the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black< and White in Canada. It was his third novel, The Book of Negroes (2007) — published in some countries as Someone Knows My Name and in French as Aminata — that attracted widespread attention in Canada and other countries.
Lawrence Hill's non-fiction book, Blood: The Stuff of Life was published in September 2013. Blood is a personal consideration of the physical, social, cultural...
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