DOCSLIB.ORG

Cahiers-Papers 53-1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cahiers-Papers 53-1 The Giller Prize (1994–2004) and Scotiabank Giller Prize (2005–2014): A Bibliography Andrew David Irvine* For the price of a meal in this town you can buy all the books. Eat at home and buy the books. Jack Rabinovitch1 Founded in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch, the Giller Prize was established to honour Rabinovitch’s late wife, the journalist Doris Giller, who had died from cancer a year earlier.2 Since its inception, the prize has served to recognize excellence in Canadian English-language fiction, including both novels and short stories. Initially the award was endowed to provide an annual cash prize of $25,000.3 In 2005, the Giller Prize partnered with Scotiabank to create the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Under the new arrangement, the annual purse doubled in size to $50,000, with $40,000 going to the winner and $2,500 going to each of four additional finalists.4 Beginning in 2008, $50,000 was given to the winner and $5,000 * Andrew Irvine holds the position of Professor and Head of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Errata may be sent to the author at [email protected]. 1 Quoted in Deborah Dundas, “Giller Prize shortlist ‘so good,’ it expands to six,” 6 October 2014, accessed 17 September 2015, www.thestar.com/entertainment/ books/2014/10/06/giller_prize_2014_shortlist_announced.html. 2 “The Giller Prize Story: An Oral History: Part One,” 8 October 2013, accessed 11 November 2014, www.quillandquire.com/awards/2013/10/08/the-giller- prize-story-an-oral-history-part-one; cf. Jack Rabinovitch, “Introduction,” The Scotiabank Giller Prize – 15 Years, (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008), xi–xxi for additional detail. 3 “Canada’s Premier Prize for Fiction Names Its Finalists,” press release, 4 October 1994, accessed 11 November 2014, www.scotiabank.com/gillerprize/files/12/10/ news_100494.html. 4 “The Giller Prize Teams Up with Scotiabank,” press release, 22 September 2005, accessed 11 November 2014, www.scotiabank.com/gillerprize/files/12/10/ news_092205.html. CCahiers-papersahiers-papers 553-13-1 - FFinal.inddinal.indd 8899 22015-10-05015-10-05 113:58:293:58:29 90 Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 53/1 was given to each of the other finalists.5 Beginning in 2014 the prize was again doubled, with $100,000 going to the winner and $10,000 to each finalist.6 Since the award’s inception, all finalists have also received specially bound copies of their books. The significant size of the awards has served not only as recognition of the importance of Canadian fiction but also as an incentive for other literary awards to increase the size of their prizes. Each year a three-member jury selects the winning book from a publicly announced short list of five or six nominees. Since 2006 a preliminary long list of nominees has also been made public.7 In 2011 a Reader’s Choice selection was incorporated into the long list.8 (In 2012 the Reader’s Choice competition was held a second time, but independently of the Giller nomination process.9) Since 1998, the black-tie award gala at which award winners receive their prizes has been broadcast regularly on national television. As Rabinovitch reports, the purpose of the broadcasts has been not just to help publicize the prize, but also to help authors “sell more books.”10 Since 1994, two anthologies have appeared honouring Giller Prize award winners. The first was entitled Prize Writing: The 10th Anniversary Collection, and was edited by Gary Stephen Ross (Toronto: The Giller Prize Foundation). It appeared in a paperback trade edition in 2003 (isbn 1-55245-133-X). The second was entitled The Scotiabank Giller Prize – 15 Years: An Anthology of Prize-Winning Canadian Fiction, with an introduction by Jack Rabinovitch (Toronto: Penguin Canada). It appeared in a hardcover trade edition in 2008 5 “Jury Panel Announced for 15th Anniversary of Scotiabank Giller Prize,” press release, 31 March 2008, accessed 11 November 2014, www.scotiabank.com/ gillerprize/files/12/10/news_033108.html. 6 “The Scotiabank Giller Prize Presents Its 2014 Longlist, Announces Substantial increase in Amount of Award,” press release, 16 September 2014, accessed 11 November 2014, www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca/the-scotiabank-giller-prize- presents-its-2014-longlist-announces-substantial-increase-in-amount-of-award. 7 “The 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize Announces its Inaugural Longlist,” press release, 11 September 2006, accessed 11 November 2014, www.scotiabank.com/ gillerprize/files/12/10/news_091106.html. 8 “Scotiabank Giller Prize 2011 Announces its Longlist,” press release, 6 September 2011, accessed 11 November 2014, www.scotiabank.com/gillerprize/files/12/10/ news_090611.html. 9 “Scotiabank Giller Prize 2012 Announces its Longlist,” press release, 4 September 2012, accessed 11 November 2014, www.scotiabank.com/gillerprize/files/12/10/ news_090412.html. 10 Rabinovitch, “Introduction,” (see note 2), xx. CCahiers-papersahiers-papers 553-13-1 - FFinal.inddinal.indd 9900 22015-10-05015-10-05 113:58:303:58:30 The Giller Prize (1994–2004) and Scotiabank Giller Prize (2005–2014)91 (isbn 978-0-670-06802-9) and in a leather-bound presentation edition that same year (isbn 978-0-670-06983-5). Over the past twenty-one years, two authors have won the award twice (M.G. Vassanji in 1994 and 2003, and Alice Munro in 1998 and 2004). Only once has the prize been given to multiple authors (Michael Ondaatje and David Adams Richards in 2000). The following list contains bibliographical information about all winning books from 1994 to 2014. A unique reference number accompanies each title. For example, the number G1-1994.p, which accompanies Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets, indicates that this book was the first Giller winner, G1; that it won in 1994; and that it was originally issued in paperback, p (or alternatively in hardcover, h). Background information has been gathered from the following collections: BKU University of British Columbia Okanagan, Library BVAUS University of British Columbia, Special Collections and University Archives Division IRV Author’s private collection OONL Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada The names of award winners and jury members have been drawn from Giller Prize press releases and related sources, all of which remain available online. Bibliographical information regarding individual titles has been taken from books within the author’s private collection (IRV). 1994 (1ST YEAR)11 M.G. Vassanji, The Book of Secrets, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1994. (G1-1994.p) Issued in paperback with French flaps; isbn 0-7710-8719- 5, with the full number line 1 2 3 4 5 98 97 96 95 94; title variant 11 “Canada’s Premier Prize for Fiction Names Its Finalists,” (see note 3); The Canadian Encyclopedia, s.v. “Scotiabank Giller Prize Winners,” accessed 11 November 2014, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/scotiabank- giller-prize-past-winners. CCahiers-papersahiers-papers 553-13-1 - FFinal.inddinal.indd 9911 22015-10-05015-10-05 113:58:303:58:30 92 Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 53/1 The Book of Secrets: A Novel; design credit Kong; artwork credit Greg Spalenka; photo credit Denise Grant; price $19.99; copy examined IRV; award $25,000. other finalists (1) Bonnie Burnard, Casino & Other Stories, Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1994; (2) Eliza Clark, What You Need: A Novel, Toronto: Somerville House Publishing, 1994; (3) Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy: A Novel in Six Stories, Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1994; (4) Steve Weiner, The Museum of Love, Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, 1994. jury members Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, David Staines. 1995 (2ND YEAR)12 Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1995. (G2-1995.h) Issued in hardcover with dust jacket; isbn 0-7710-6052- 1, with the full number line 1 2 3 4 5 99 98 97 96 95; title variant A Fine Balance: A Novel; design credit K.T. Njo; photo credits F. Mistry, Dario Mitidieri; price $35.00; copy examined IRV; award $25,000. other finalists (1) Timothy Findley, The Piano Man’s Daughter, Toronto: HarperCollins, 1995; (2) Barbara Gowdy, Mister Sandman: A Novel, Toronto: Somerville House, 1995; (3) Leo McKay Jr, Like This: Stories, Concord, Ontario: House of Anansi Press, 1995; (4) Richard B. Wright, The Age of Longing: A Novel, Toronto: HarperCollins, 1995. jury members Mordecai Richler, David Staines, Jane Urquhart. 12 “1995 Jury Panel Announced for the Giller Prize,” press release, 18 May 1995, accessed 11 November 2014, www.scotiabank.com/gillerprize/files/12/10/ news_051895.html; The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Scotiabank Giller Prize Winners” (see note 11). CCahiers-papersahiers-papers 553-13-1 - FFinal.inddinal.indd 9922 22015-10-05015-10-05 113:58:303:58:30 The Giller Prize (1994–2004) and Scotiabank Giller Prize (2005–2014)93 1996 (3RD YEAR)13 Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1996. (G3-1996.h) Issued in hardcover with dust jacket; isbn 0-7710-0835- X, with the full number line 1 2 3 4 5 00 99 98 97 96; partner companies New York: Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., London: Bloomsbury Publishing Limited; design credits Kong, Marysarah Quinn; artwork credit Dante Gabriel Rossetti; photo credit Andrew MacNaughton; price $32.50; copy examined IRV; award $25,000. other finalists (1) Gail Anderson-Dargatz, The Cure for Death by Lightning: A Novel, Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1996; (2) Ann- Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees, Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996; (3) Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996; (4) Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996. jury members Bonnie Burnard, Carol Shields, David Staines. 1997 (4TH YEAR)14 Mordecai Richler, Barney’s Version, Toronto: Alfred A.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature Edited by Eva-Marie Kröller Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-15962-4 — The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature Edited by Eva-Marie Kröller Frontmatter More Information The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature This fully revised second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature offers a comprehensive introduction to major writers, genres, and topics. For this edition several chapters have been completely re-written to relect major developments in Canadian literature since 2004. Surveys of ic- tion, drama, and poetry are complemented by chapters on Aboriginal writ- ing, autobiography, literary criticism, writing by women, and the emergence of urban writing. Areas of research that have expanded since the irst edition include environmental concerns and questions of sexuality which are freshly explored across several different chapters. A substantial chapter on franco- phone writing is included. Authors such as Margaret Atwood, noted for her experiments in multiple literary genres, are given full consideration, as is the work of authors who have achieved major recognition, such as Alice Munro, recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature. Eva-Marie Kröller edited the Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature (irst edn., 2004) and, with Coral Ann Howells, the Cambridge History of Canadian Literature (2009). She has published widely on travel writing and cultural semiotics, and won a Killam Research Prize as well as the Distin- guished Editor Award of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for her work as editor of the journal Canadian
    [Show full text]
  • Malamud Release 2013
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS CONTACT: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 Peter Eramo, (202) 675-0344, [email protected] Emma Snyder, (202) 898-9061, [email protected] George Saunders to receive 2013 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story Washington, D.C.—George Saunders has been selected to receive the 2013 PEN/Malamud Award. Given annually since 1988 in honor of the late Bernard Malamud, this award recognizes a body of work that demonstrates excellence in the art of short fiction. The announcement was made today by the directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Robert Stone and Susan Richards Shreve, Co-Chairs. George Saunders is an acclaimed essayist and author of novellas, but he is best known for his energetic, inventive, and deeply humane short stories. In the words of Alan Cheuse, a member of the Malamud Award Committee, “Saunders is one of the most gifted and seriously successful comic short story writers working in America today. And his comedy, like most great comedy, is dark. George Saunders is the real thing, the successor to such dark comedians of ordinary speech as Donald Barthelme and Grace Paley. He's a Vonnegutian in his soul and, paradoxically, a writer like no one but himself.” This singular writing voice is equal parts hilarious and compassionate, merging colloquial language with technocratic jargon, surreal futuristic landscapes with everyday homes and yards, foreboding undercurrents with sparks of enormous optimism. The first of Saunders’s four published story collections, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, arrived in 1996 and moved Thomas Pynchon to describe Saunders as, “An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times.” His most recent collection, Tenth of December, was published to near universal acclaim in January of 2013 and inspired a New York Times Magazine cover story titled, “George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year.” Charles Yu, reviewing it in the L.A.
    [Show full text]
  • The Story and Its Writer
    CONTENTS Preface v Introduction: Te Story and Its Writer 1 Part One: Stories 7 Sherman Alexie, Te Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfght in Heaven 9 Isabelle Allende, An Act of Vengeance 15 RELATED CASEBOOK: Jorge Luis Borges, Borges and I, 1020; Alejo Car- pentier, On the Marvelous Real in America, 1022; Alejo Carpentier, Te Baroque and the Marvelous Real, 1024; Luis Leal, Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature, 1026; William Gass, Te First Seven Pages of the Boom, 1028; Ursula K. Le Guin, Te Kind of Fiction Most Charac- teristic of Our Times, 1030; Mario Vargas Llosa, Te Prose Style of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, 1034 Sherwood Anderson, Hands 22 RELATED COMMENTARY: Sherwood Anderson, “Form, Not Plot, in the Short Story,” 878 Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings 27 RELATED COMMENTARY: Margaret Atwood, “Reading Blind,” 881 James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 31 RELATED COMMENTARY: James Baldwin, Autobiographical Notes, 884 Toni Cade Bambara, Te Lesson 55 RELATED STORY: ZZ Packer, Brownies, 740 Russell Banks, Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat 62 RELATED STORY: Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants, 416 Ann Beattie, Janus 69 Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 73 Jorge Luis Borges, Te South 82 RELATED CASEBOOK: Jorge Luis Borges, Borges and I, 1020; Alejo Car- pentier, On the Marvelous Real in America, 1022; Alejo Carpentier, Te xi 00_CHA_6555_FM_i-xx.indd 11 11/06/14 2:46 PM xii CONTENTS Baroque and the Marvelous Real, 1024; Luis Leal, Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature, 1026; William Gass, Te First Seven Pages of the Boom, 1028; Ursula K.
    [Show full text]
  • Paying Attention to Public Readers of Canadian Literature
    PAYING ATTENTION TO PUBLIC READERS OF CANADIAN LITERATURE: POPULAR GENRE SYSTEMS, PUBLICS, AND CANONS by KATHRYN GRAFTON BA, The University of British Columbia, 1992 MPhil, University of Stirling, 1994 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2010 © Kathryn Grafton, 2010 ABSTRACT Paying Attention to Public Readers of Canadian Literature examines contemporary moments when Canadian literature has been canonized in the context of popular reading programs. I investigate the canonical agency of public readers who participate in these programs: readers acting in a non-professional capacity who speak and write publicly about their reading experiences. I argue that contemporary popular canons are discursive spaces whose constitution depends upon public readers. My work resists the common critique that these reading programs and their canons produce a mass of readers who read the same work at the same time in the same way. To demonstrate that public readers are canon-makers, I offer a genre approach to contemporary canons that draws upon literary and new rhetorical genre theory. I contend in Chapter One that canons are discursive spaces comprised of public literary texts and public texts about literature, including those produced by readers. I study the intertextual dynamics of canons through Michael Warner’s theory of publics and Anne Freadman’s concept of “uptake.” Canons arise from genre systems that are constituted to respond to exigencies readily recognized by many readers, motivating some to participate. I argue that public readers’ agency lies in the contingent ways they select and interpret a literary work while taking up and instantiating a canonizing genre.
    [Show full text]
  • Past, Present, and Memory: the Ambivalence of Tradition in The
    PAST, PRESENT, AND MEMORY The Ambivalence of Tradition in the Short Stories of Alistair MacLeod Pat Byrne Memorial University of Newfoundland The editor of a small collection of essays published in 2001 stated in her introduction that “the essays in this book explore the hold on the heart that is Alistair MacLeod’s writing” (Guilford 2001: 9). The honours and awards, both national and international, that have been bestowed on MacLeod’s work suggest that his writing has indeed touched many a heart, and that fact alone seems to have introduced a note of uncertainty or disquietude among some critics. One gets a sense that, despite the recognition MacLeod has received in recent years, his writing is seen by some as not quite in step with the times, and, because he has not produced a prodigious quantity of work, he can’t be considered in the same league as today’s literary superstars. John Ditsky took a swipe at this attitude as early as 1988 when he wrote: Perhaps it is ironic that MacLeod’s fiction is to be first published in book form in the U. S. by the Ontario Review Press run by Joyce Carol Oates and her husband Ray Smith, when one considers the disparity between the prolific Oates — often absurdly disparaged for just that trait — and the comparatively plodding MacLeod, Oates’s onetime University of Windsor colleague. Likely, she simply appreciates the distinctive qualities of MacLeod’s stories (2). Similarly, Jane Urquhart, in her own very positive commentary on the stories in As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories, noted that MacLeod’s stories “have been called ..
    [Show full text]
  • Alice Munro and the Anatomy of the Short Story
    Alice Munro and the Anatomy of the Short Story Alice Munro and the Anatomy of the Short Story Edited by Oriana Palusci Alice Munro and the Anatomy of the Short Story Edited by Oriana Palusci This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Oriana Palusci and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0353-4 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0353-3 CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Alice Munro’s Short Stories in the Anatomy Theatre Oriana Palusci Section I: The Resonance of Language Chapter One ............................................................................................... 13 Dance of Happy Polysemy: The Reverberations of Alice Munro’s Language Héliane Ventura Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 27 Too Much Curiosity? The Late Fiction of Alice Munro Janice Kulyk Keefer Section II: Story Bricks Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 45 Alice Munro as the Master
    [Show full text]
  • Writing Here1
    WRITING HERE1 W.H. NEW n 2003, for the BC Federation of Writers, Susan Musgrave assembled a collection of new fiction and poetry from some fifty-two IBC writers, called The FED Anthology.2 Included in this anthology is a story by Carol Matthews called “Living in ascii,” which begins with a woman recording her husband’s annoyance at whatever he sees as stupidity (noisy traffic and inaccurate grammar, for instance, and the loss of his own words when his computer apparently swallows them). This woman then tells of going to a party, of the shifting (and sometimes divisive) relationships among all the women who were attending, and of the subjects they discussed. These included a rape trial, national survival, men, cliffs, courage, cormorant nests, and endangered species. After reflecting on the etymology of the word “egg” (and its connection with the word “edge”), she then declares her impatience with schisms and losses, and her wish to recover something whole. The story closes this way: “If I were to tell the true story, I would write it not in words but in symbols, [like an] ... ascii printout. It would be very short and very true. It would go like this: moon, woman, woman; man, bird, sun; heart, heart, heart, heart, heart; rock, scissors, paper. The title would be egg. That would be the whole story.”3 This egg is the prologue to my comments here. So is the list of disparate nouns – or only seemingly disparate, in that (by collecting them as she does) the narrator connects them into story.
    [Show full text]
  • MS ATWOOD, Margaret Papers Coll
    MS ATWOOD, Margaret Papers Coll. 00127L Gift of Margaret Atwood, 2017 Extent: 36 boxes and items (11 metres) Includes extensive family and personal correspondence, 1940s to the present; The Handmaid’s Tale TV series media; Alias Grace TV series media; The Heart Goes Last dead matter; appearances; print; juvenilia including papier mache puppets made in high school; Maternal Aunt Joyce Barkhouse (author of Pit Pony and Anna’s Pet), fan mail; professional correspondence and other material Arrangement note: correspondence was organized in various packets and has been kept in original order, rather than alphabetical or chronological order Restriction note: Puppets are restricted due to their fragility (Boxes 26-29). Box 1 Family correspondence, 1970s-1980s: 95 folders Parents (Carl and Margaret Eleanor Atwood) Aunt Kae Cogswell Aunt Ada Folder 1 Mother to Peggy and Jim ALS and envelope January 2, 1969 [sic] 1970 Folder 2 Mother to Peggy and Jim ALS and envelope March 30, 1970 Folder 3 Mother to Peggy and Jim TLS and envelope April 21, 1970 Folder 4 Mother to Peggy and Jim TLS and ALS, envelope April 29, 1970 Folder 5 Mother to Peggy and Jim ALS August 20, 1970 Folder 6 Mother to Peggy and Jim ALS September 6, 1970 Folder 7 Mother to Peggy and Jim TLS, ANS and envelope September 17, 1970 1 MS ATWOOD, Margaret Papers Coll. 00127L Folder 8 Mother to Peggy ALS September 19, 1970 Folder 9 Dad to Peggy ALS September 26, 1970 Folder 10 Mother to Peggy and Jim TLS (stamps) and envelope October 14, 1970 Folder 11 Mother to Peggy and Jim ALS November 10, 1970 Folder 12 Mother to Peggy ALS November 15, 1970 Folder 13 Mother to Peggy and Jim ALS December 20, 1970 Folder 14 Mother to Peggy and Jim TLS and envelope December 27, 1970 Folder 15 Mother to Peggy and Jim TLS and envelope January 8, 1971 Folder 16 Mother to Peggy and Jim TLS and envelope January 15, 1971 Folder 17 Mother to Peggy and Jim TLS January 20, 1971 TLS and envelope January 27, 1971 Folder 18 Mother to Peggy ALS and envelope November 25, 1973 2 MS ATWOOD, Margaret Papers Coll.
    [Show full text]
  • The Globe 100: Our Favourite Books of 2020
    The Globe 100: Our favourite books of 2020 Globe and Mail editors and reviewers offer up our annual guide to the most notable fiction, non- fiction, thrillers, graphic novels, picture books, young adult books and cookbooks of the year MARGARET CANNON, JEFFREY CANTON, JUDITH PEREIRA, SEAN ROGERS, AND ALEC SCOTT SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED DECEMBER 4, 2020UPDATED 1 MINUTE AGO ILLUSTRATION BY SALINI PERERA Ridgerunner GIL ADAMSON (HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS) The sequel to The Outlander (2007), this gothic Western was short-listed for this year’s Giller and won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. The novel begins in 1917 with the death of Mary, the first novel’s main character, and focuses on the father of her child, Moreland. He sets out to steal enough cash to give his son a comfortable life. But their boy, who has his parents’ stubbornness and itch for self- sufficiency, doesn’t stay put for long. READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR GIL ADAMSON Homeland Elegies AYAD AKHTAR (LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY) This novel by the Pulitzer-winning author of Disgraced provocatively blends fact and fiction, paradox and contradiction, appearing to be a memoir of a man with the same name and pedigree as its author – a Pulitzer-winning American playwright of Pakistani-Muslim extraction whose father, a doctor, became enamoured with Donald Trump after treating him for a heart ailment, and then disillusioned after he assumes the presidency. READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR AYAD AKHTAR Leave The World Behind RUMAAN ALAM (HARPERCOLLINS) The author of Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother is back with a look at what happens when a pair of white renters, Clay and Amanda, are startled by the unexpected arrival of the Black property owners, who claim they’re escaping a mysterious blackout in New York.
    [Show full text]
  • Canada's Façade of Equality: Austin Clarke's More Mary Ma
    Ma, “Canada’s Façade of Equality” 11 Canada’s Façade of Equality: Austin Clarke’s More Mary Ma Canada is known as a haven for immigrants. Canadian migrants, their children, and their grandchildren live in the diaspora, a physical community who “acknowledge that ‘the old country’ […] always has some claim on their loyalty and emotions” (Cohen qtd. McLeod 237) and carry a fractured sense of identity through “living in one country but looking across time and space to another” (McLeod 237). Canada prides itself as a multicultural nation that champions inclusivity, diversity, and equality. However, it seems Canada’s often glorified multiculturalism is little more than “a media mask, […] a public advertising campaign” (McLeod 262). This façade seems to be promoted by Canadian media, government, and society to perpetuate an illusion of equality while concurrently “ignor[ing] the underlying and continuing inequalities and prejudices that blight the lives of diasporic peoples” (McLeod 262). In the novel More, Austin Clarke incisively exposes the implicit systemic and societal racism festering in Canada, while also exposing the psychological complexities of living in the diaspora. In More, Clarke unmasks Canada’s systemic discrimination which has long allowed Canadian employers to retain power while subjugating vulnerable immigrant workers. Clarke delineates this systemic racism by describing the limited employment opportunities immigrants, especially Black immigrants, have in Canada. In the novel, Bertram is an apprentice mechanic in Barbados. Upon his arrival in Canada, he earnestly pursues a job in his specialized field. However, “after two months of single-minded perusal of the pages that advertised hundreds of jobs, skilled and unskilled, that related to repairing cars” (Clarke 67), Bertram abandons his dream.
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative Voice in David Elias's Sunday Afternoon
    Speaking Redemption: Narrative Voice in David Elias’s Sunday Afternoon Edna A. Froese, St. Thomas More College, Saskatoon Whatever the recent developments in narrative theology have accomplished by way of allowing Christian believers to negotiate postmodern challenges to the authority of the scriptural foundations of their beliefs, the newly emphasized parallels between theology and literature open up wonderful possibilities for reading fiction as well as the Bible itself. Catherine Wallace, for example, in “Faith and Fiction: Literature as Revelation,” argues that literature “has much to offer religion that religion fails to understand and to accept” (2). With Coleridge and then Steiner, Wallace observes that faith is neither “an act of will [nor] an act of knowledge” but “a creative act, the act of imagination”; thus “art and the encounter with God share a common origin in the human spirit” (5). Since “the knowledge of God is not propositional but visionary” (5-6), the poet (or novelist or playwright) is also an “autonomous and significant theologian” (1), whose task it is “to take all the muddled disruptive incoherence of real fact and actual memory – whether communal or personal – and then select and arrange, reform and recast them into a coherent aesthetic whole that tells a visionary truth that facts alone cannot reveal” (10).1 If the 202 Journal of Mennonite Studies truth that the poet thus reveals is to be understood, whether that poet happens to be the redactor of Scripture or a contemporary novelist, “we must first of all read properly, which is to say attentively, details regarded not as historical facts but as poetic choices” (Wallace 10).
    [Show full text]
  • On Deformity: Bodies in Contemporary Canadian Fiction
    University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2012-10-25 On Deformity: Bodies in Contemporary Canadian Fiction Ram, Véronique Dorais Ram, V. D. (2012). On Deformity: Bodies in Contemporary Canadian Fiction (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27175 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/312 doctoral thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY On Deformity: Bodies in Contemporary Canadian Fiction by Véronique Dorais Ram A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA October, 2012 © Véronique Dorais Ram 2012 Abstract This dissertation ponders how deformity acts as an index of resistance to the conventional family saga; it challenges the authority of the genre, which perpetuates conformity to affirm the existence of a national identity. I open with a history of the trope of deformity and a theory on its applicability to questions of the nation in Canadian fiction. Bonnie Burnard’s A Good House begins the literary analysis and considers how Daphne’s asymmetrical face exemplifies the novel’s overarching deformation of the domestic realist text.
    [Show full text]