Black Alley

In the Cote-de-Negre area of Montreal, the first stop for many new immigrants, live people of more than 100 nationalities, Marcelo, the sensitive son of Chilean refugees, and Cleo, a shy boy from Haiti, find friendship on the track, winning a major relay race together. Years later, in the same streets, two violent gangs, the Latino Power and the Bad Boys, confront each other, and their leaders must decide whether they will be united by their childhood friendship, or divided by race . . . A seminal statement about multicultural societies, this brilliantly constructed, deeply felt novel set off a controversy when it was first published in French. Its appearance in English is a literary event not to be missed.