
Code Noir
Fictions
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Narrated by:
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Mia Golden
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Marsha Regis
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K.C. Collins
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Canisia Lubrin
About this listen
Canisia Lubrin's debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure, deceptively simple, is based on the infamous Code Noir, a set of real historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multilayered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.
With a foreword by Christina Sharpe, Code Noir ranges in style from contemporary realism to dystopian literature, from futuristic fantasy to historical fiction. This inventive, shape-shifting braid of narratives exists far beyond the boundaries of an official decree.
©2024 Canisia Lubrin; Foreword copyright 2024 by Christina Sharpe (P)2024 Penguin Random House Canada Limited.Critic reviews
"Code Noir is storytelling at its deepest and most intimate. These stories are magic and you must enter them as if you, too, are wondrous."—Dionne Brand, author of Nomenclature, Theory, and Map to the Door of No Return
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