Beautiful and meticulously wrought, set in both Toronto and the Caribbean, this astonishing novel gives voice to the power of love and belonging in a story of two women, profoundly different, each in her own spiritual exile.

Dionne Brand is internationally known for her poetry, fiction, and essays. She has received many awards, notably the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Trillium Award (Land to Light On), 1997), the Pat Lowther Award (Thirsty, 2005), the City of Toronto Book Award (What We All Long For, 2006), and the Harbourfront Festival Award (2006), given in recognition of her substantial contribution to literature. She is a professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.

Leslie C. Sanders is a professor at York University, where she teaches African American and Black Canadian literature. She is the author of The Development of Black Theatre in America, the editor of two volumes of Langston Hughes’s performance works, and a general editor of the Collected Works of Langston Hughes. She has written essays on African American and Black Canadian literature.

Dionne Brand's profile page

"A fierce, sensuous novel of women in migration, political and emotional. Concrete and visionary as a dream, relentless as the history it reveals, In Another Place, Not Here is a work of great beauty and moral imagination." —Adrienne Rich

"With this book, this marvellous love letter, Brand emerges as a writer of the first rank. . . . She combines folklore with poetry in a manner that recalls Michael Ondaatje, and she writes reportage like Mavis Gallant. This book is one of the classics of our culture." —Halifax Chronicle-Herald

"One of the best Canadian [novels] that I have read in the last ten years. [It] touches the centre of Canadian experience, dealing with our racism, embracing the possibility of confrontation and of cure." —Austin Clarke, The Toronto Star

"This is simply a stunning book." —The Globe and Mail
"A sensuous, lyrical work of fiction in the tradition of one of [Brand's] favorite American authors: Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison." —Toronto Star

"A beautiful book that moves the reader with its evocative language, often closer to poetry than prose, and its insights in the immigrant experience of Caribbean women." —Montreal Gazette

"Brand's style intoxicates. . . . [She] is one of the freshest, fiercest voices in Canadian letters. . . . There are dizzying, intoxicating verbal acrobatics on almost every page, passages of painfully lyric beauty." —Edmonton Journal

"Luscious . . . as sensuous as the smooth coral pulp of mangoes." —Ottawa Citizen

"Brand's mesmerizing voice lures the reader through a plot that oscillates between past and present. Her rendering of the island's slave history is sublimely evocative. . . . The novel reinforces Brand's status as a significant voice for the Caribbean-Canadian experience." —Maclean's

"At times almost a poem with snatches of breathtakingly beautiful language, this is no work of a beginner. . . . Brand's prose takes up residence on your tongue, demanding to be read and spoken aloud." —The Financial Post
"Startling, as if we had entered the heart of another human being." —Books in Canada

"Two worlds collide in this intense, sensuous first novel from a filmmaker, poet and essayist . . . powerful . . ." —Publishers Weekly

"Dionne Brand's debut novel is a work of artistic boldness. . . . A must-read book." —MS magazine

"Her debut novel reads with the urgent intensity of a wail that continues to echo." —The Washington Post Book World

"Passionate in its attention to emotional nuance and visual detail, In Another Place, Not Here weds beauty and a fierce intelligence in a work that offers a syncretic and multiple sense of place." —The New York Times Book Review
"You have to read the power of Dionne Brand's language to appreciate just how much life poetry it expresses. . . . In Another Place Not Here breaks new paths in fiction." —Morning Star (UK)