A receiver and method are provided for mitigation of finer non-linearities in multilevel coded-modulation schemes. The receiver includes a multilevel Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) equalizer configured to receive channel samples of an input signal, partially mitigate fiber non-linearities, and provide symbol reliabilities. The receiver further includes a bit probabilities module coupled to the BCJR equalizer configured to calculate soft bit reliabilities from the symbol reliabilities. The receiver also includes one or more low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoders coupled to the bit probabilities module and the BCJR equalizer, configured to receive the soft bit reliabilities and output code words. The one or more LDPC decoders iteratively provide extrinsic soft information feedback to the BCJR equalizer to compensate for the fiber non-linearities.