Hakeem Jinnah enjoys an ordinary life of working the Vancouver Tribune's crime beat, flirting with women, seeking interested investors in a mail-order-bride scheme, and driving around in his sattelite-guided Love Machine. But when he and another Tribune reporter begin competing to cover the story of a shady stock promoter's death, he finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation.

This entertaining and suspenseful debut introduces us to an unforgettable lead character. Mr. Jinnah, a politically incorrect but resourceful reporter, proves to be a wily and relentless investigator. Hindered in his pursuits by the police department, Mr. Jinnah searches out the truth in an increasingly bizarre investigation. Meanwhile, he and his cousin seek their fortune in a scheme to marry Russian peasant women to wealthy Chinese men.

How can an enterprising newspaper reporter sell his Babji dolls when there’s a beheaded street youth, a Rave Messiah battling a berserk “God Squad,” and a conniving new editor to deal with? Especially when he’s suffering all the symptoms of dengue fever? Hakeem Jinnah is back and as politically incorrect as ever. The chain-smoking, headline-chasing hypochondriac is in a race to find a killer and help save his buddy Sergeant Graham’s career. But a bevy of She Demons bedevil him at each turn. Soon Jinnah is entangled in a cultic web that threatens his friends, his family, and his life.

Fast-paced, funny, and suspenseful, this is the second Mister Jinnah novel featuring the larger-than-life crime reporter. Just as in his debut adventure, Mister Jinnah: Securities, the flirtatious and always resourceful Jinnah has to use every ounce of his investigative genius to solve a crime … and make a few extra dollars on the side.

"Compton pushes us to look beneath the surface—past those comforting tales of nationhood and racial solidarity—to the more nebulous and ever-shifting truth. This is a brilliant and original work that should be mandatory reading for any student of race and history."—Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia

After Canaan, the first nonfiction book by acclaimed African Canadian poet Wayde Compton, repositions the North American discussion of race in the wake of the tumultuous twentieth century. Written from the perspective of someone who was born and lives outside of African American culture, it riffs on the concept of Canada as a promised land (or "Canaan") encoded in African American myth and song since the days of slavery. These varied essays, steeped in a kind of history rarely written about, explore the language of racial misrecognition (also known as "passing"), the failure of urban renewal, humor as a counterweight to "official" multiculturalism, the poetics of hip hop turntablism, and the impact of the Obama phenomenon on the way we speak about race itself. Compton marks the passing of old modes of antiracism and multiculturalism, and points toward what may or may not be a "post-racial" future, but will without doubt be a brave new world of cultural perception.

After Canaan is a brilliant and thoughtful consideration of African (North) American culture as it attempts to redefine itself in the Obama era.

Wayde Compton's previous books include the poetry collections 49th Parallel Psalm and Performance Bond. He teaches English in Vancouver, BC.