We, the Kindling accomplishes what I think is one of the most important feats of literature: it makes it possible to look at the unthinkable and really see it, feel it, in the same way a pinhole box allows us to look at a solar eclipse." —Catherine Leroux, Canada Reads-winning author of The Future and Giller-shortlisted author of The Party Wall

We, the Kindling is an extraordinary accomplishment, a novel of voices liberating themselves from horror but equally from spectacle and instrumentalization, voices freed from conventional narration so that we may sense, in their spare beauty and insistent aliveness, that which might yet emerge from catastrophe. Only a writer with the exquisite talents and sensitivities of Otoniya Okot Bitek could make such bold and essential art.” —David Chariandy, author of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize-winning Brother and I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You

“We, The Kindling is one of those rare, clear-eyed and profound stories that pierces straight through the marrow and the heart. It is an astonishing, uncompromising novel about the vulnerability of children and the cruelty of those with unmitigated power. And because it rings so loud with truth, it alters who we are and how we understand the world. A visionary telling that will be passed down for generations. If ever there was a ‘must listen’ novel, this is it.” —Lisa Moore, author of Open, February, Caught, and the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize-shortlisted Invisible Prisons