Toronto’s Conquering Lion Pictures has picked up the film rights to Lawrence Hill’s best-selling novel The Book of Negroes. Clement Virgo (Poor Boy’s Game, Lie with Me) will direct.

The Book of Negroes was originally published by HarperCollins Canada as a hardcover in February 2007, and later rolled out to other territories. In 2008, it won Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Overall Book, before going on to win Canada Reads in March 2009. The title has sold more than 300,000 copies in Canada alone.