On Censorship and Book Burning

Shortly after the release of his bestselling novel The Book of Negroes, award-winning author Lawrence Hill received an unexpected email from a man in Amsterdam. The email was quite short, but its message packed a punch: This man planned to burn Hill's novel for using the word 'negro' in its title.

In his latest book Dear Sir, Intend to Burn Your Book: An Anatomy of Book Burning, Hill discusses his experience with censorship and provides an account of censorship in literature and the history of book burning. If you're interested in learning more, The Ottawa Citizen has published an abridged excerpt from Hill's book, which can be found here. He also did a wonderful interview with CBC's Jian Giomeshi, which you can listen to here (the interview begins at 0:05:45).