In Another Place, Not Here

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.

About the Author :
DIONNE BRAND's literary credentials are legion. Her novel Theory was a Globe and Mail Best Book. Her poetry collection The Blue Clerk was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Prize. Her collection Ossuaries won the Griffin Poetry Prize, and other collections have won the Governor General's Literary Award, the Trillium Book Prize, and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Among her other novels, In Another Place, Not Here was selected as a NYT Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book by the Globe and Mail; At the Full and Change of the Moon was selected as a Best Book by the LA Times; and What We All Long For won the Toronto Book Award. In 2006, Brand was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the world of books and writing; from 2009 to 2012 she served as Toronto's Poet Laureate, and in 2020 she won the internationally prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. In 2017, she was named to the Order of Canada. And in 2022, she became Editorial Director of Alchemy, a line of books within Knopf Canada. She lives in Toronto.

Review :
"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)