The Bibliophile: Why We Published It

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Editors’ note: While The Bibliophile was taking its summer nap, we were wide awake and thinking about some kinds of features we’d like to run in this space. Thus, this week’s installment is the first in a charmingly irregular series we should probably call “Why We Published It,” which debuts with Vanessa’s response to Anne Hawk’s The Pages of the Sea.

Photo: You can pre-order a copy of The Pages of the Sea today!

As a kid growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania in the 1980s, I spent a lot of time by myself. We lived on the rural outskirts of an already rural place, four miles from a town of fewer than 1,600. Between the turquoise waters of the public swimming pool—what was to me, at age six, the hallowed centre of the known universe—and the farmhouse I grew up in: cornfields and fields of tobacco and soy, rolling hills and the rocky glens and old-growth trees that stair-step the lower third of the the county down to the wide Susquehanna. A trip into town to the grocery store or drive-through at the bank was a source of excitement, and seeing my father’s brown Ford Ranger emerge from behind the woods at the top of the ridge that formed the southern edge of the little valley we lived in engendered a chanting sort of song that I’d sing as he made the left hand turn onto our little road, technically two lanes, but closer to one and a half, and into the long stone drive at the end of a day he’d spent pumping gas and changing tires at the gas station in town.

When I was eight or nine, my father got a new job, one that required he wake at 4:30 in the morning and drive an hour to a welding shop where, from what I could tell, he spent the day burning tiny holes in his t-shirts. Around this time, my mother stopped her part-time work cleaning houses and took a night shift stocking shelves at the grocery store. Now she slept all day, and left for her job as my father was coming home, exhausted, from his. What did I know, what did I know, as Robert Hayden asked, of the sacrifices they made, what it took from them to meet their responsibilities the best they could? Not much, if anything at all.

I did know there was a meadow with a modest herd of Holsteins and that sometimes there was a bull, and when that was the case I could not climb the metal gate or slip under the barbed wire to take the old dirt footpath along the dry creek to the tree with the bent trunk, the moss-covered one I liked to sit on. I knew I had to make myself lunch in the summer, and quietly, so as to not wake my mother, and when she was promoted, for her hard work, to a daytime position, I knew where we kept the key to the front door to let myself in after school. I can’t remember if I was told to lock it behind me: probably not. But other than these rules and similar, and school, and church most Sundays, I was left almost entirely to my own devices. I swung on the tire swing that hung from the weeping willow, and played in the sandbox, and practiced with my youth-sized recurve bow, shooting at a stack of haybales against the barn. I kicked a soccer ball against a wall and practiced free throws in the driveway and shot my BB gun at the stop sign on top of the hill, straining to hear the faint ping. I walked the fencerows back towards the deeper woods as far as I was not afraid to go, and I read stacks and stacks and stacks of books.

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Books: have we come round, at last, to the point? The Pages of the Sea, a debut novel by Anne Hawk, landed in my inbox one day in April courtesy of Dan, who’d received it from the good people at Weatherglass Books, an independent press in the UK. I took a galley home and started reading that night. (Some childhood habits, happily, never change.) In the opening scene, Wheeler, the novel’s young protagonist, is sitting outside watching her aunt, Celeste, go in and out of the house:

We quickly learn that Wheeler and her two sisters have recently moved into the house they now share with their two aunts and three cousins because their mother has gone overseas to work in England, and “[e]ach month a postal order arrived from England covering the sisters’ room and board.”

When Tant’Celeste speaks to Wheeler, it’s to ask a question she can’t answer: where the rest of the children have gone. When Wheeler doesn’t respond, Celeste sends her to look for them, and when she returns alone, she’s not sure what to make of her aunt’s response:

It’s a beautiful piece of exposition, these opening four pages: Hawk immerses us in Wheeler’s world, capturing the child’s discomfort in the unfamiliar situation and her uncertainty about the mysterious actions and emotions of adults, and establishing both conflict and setting, one inextricable from the other. Wheeler’s interior monologue, written in the rich cadences of her native Caribbean English, with dialogue rendered in the same, voice the lived experience of a time and place and together join a standard English narration in what Hawk describes as a collaboration between Englishes that complement and often overlap each other. It’s a technique that puts me in mind of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston’s brilliant vernacular novel of the American South, which starts gazing out towards a metaphorical sea and then introduces a young protagonist growing up without a father or mother, and of another of our favourite Biblioasis books: Roy Jacobsen’s The Unseen, with its inventive English translation, by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, of an untranslatable Norwegian dialect—and another novel that begins with a small girl living on a small island, wondering about the world of adults. Like both of those books—one a classic of Modern literature, one an International Booker finalist and bestselling Biblioasis novel—this one welcomes its readers into its world on its own terms from a position of imaginative generosity and of love. It’s often said a great book teaches you how to read it: let me be one of the first, and certainly not the last, to say this is a great book.

For reasons likely obvious by now, my response was: sign it up. And so I couldn’t be more pleased to be writing this to you, Dear Reader, the week before the Canadian publication of Anne Hawk’s brilliant debut novel, The Pages of the Sea. I hope it will find you, wherever you are and wherever you are from, and it will remind you what literature is for. And I hope you’ll stay tuned for September 27, when The Bibliophile will feature an original essay by Anne Hawk on Caribbean English.

BC readers: Upstart & Crow will host the launch of The Pages of the Sea on October 3, 2024 at 7:00PM.

Vanessa Stauffer
Managing Editor

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Media Hits: THE NOTEBOOK, A WAY TO BE HAPPY, MAY OUR JOY ENDURE, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

THE NOTEBOOK

The Notebook by Roland Allen (Sep 3, 2024) was excerpted in Lit Hub on September 9. You can check out the excerpt, “Paper Trail: On the Cross-Cultural Evolution of the Notebook” here.

Roland Allen was interviewed by Piya Chattopadhyay for CBC Sunday Magazine. The interview was posted on September 8, and you can check it out in full here.

Grab The Notebook here!

A WAY TO BE HAPPY

A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson (Sep 10, 2024) has been longlisted for the Giller Prize, and is showing up on a number of lists! Publishers Weekly (Sep 5), CBC Books (Sep 4), and Quill & Quire (Sep 4) have all posted about the longlist.

A Way to Be Happy was also highlighted in the Georgia Straight as one of the five books on the Giller longlist by BC authors. You can check out that article here.

A Way to Be Happy was reviewed in the BC Review on September 4. You can read the full review online here.

Reviewer Bill Paul writes,

“For each story, Adderson expertly develops a detailed setting . . . [and] the author carefully constructs vivid characters from every walk of life. Each one of them making their way to some undetermined fate.”

Grab A Way to Be Happy here!

MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

May Our Joy Endure by Kev Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler (Sep 3, 2024), was mentioned in the New York Times in an interview with writer Garth Greenwell. The article was published online on September 5, and you can read the it here.

Kev Lambert was interviewed by Steven W. Beattie about May Our Joy Endure for Quill and Quire, published online on September 5, 2024. You can read the full interview here.

Lambert says in the interview,

“I wanted to challenge the idea that humanizing the person you critique is giving them credit. We hear this sometimes in political or media circles. But I think it’s a fake or a wrong idea . . . I’m starting to think that we should try to have empathy. Which doesn’t mean stop criticizing or saying everything’s fine because we have empathy. But I think it gives you an understanding of humans that is more accurate and more useful for political engagement.”

May Our Joy Endure was listed as one of The Walrus‘s “Best Books of Fall 2024.” The article was published online on September 4, 2024, and you can read it here.

Contributor Michelle Cyca writes,

“Who hasn’t wished a little divine retribution upon the ultrarich for all their sins? Kevin Lambert’s third novel, nimbly translated by Donald Winkler, is an icy, cerebral social novel . . . showcasing Lambert’s gimlet eye for the delusions and designer preferences of the 1 percent.”

May Our Joy Endure also appeared on the Daily Kos‘s list of “Contemporary Fiction Views: A new book season is about to begin,” posted online September 3. You can check out the full article here.

Grab May Our Joy Endure here!

THE PAGES OF THE SEA

The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk (Sep 17, 2024) was included in the Toronto Star‘s list of “25 books worthy of a place at the top of your to-read pile.” The list was published on September 1, 2024, and you can view it here.

Get Pages of the Sea here!

UTOPIAN GENERATION

The Utopian Generation by Pepetela, translated by David Brookshaw (Aug 13, 2024), was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada. The review will appear in print in their October issue.

The LRC writes,

“A classic post-colonial text . . . This sweeping novel, which moves in roughly ten-year increments from 1961 to 1991, tells the steadily absorbing story of ‘how a generation embarks on a glorious struggle for independence and then destroys itself.'”

Get The Utopian Generation here!

CROSSES IN THE SKY

Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie (May 21, 2024) was reviewed in The Millstone on August 29. Read the full review here.

Edith Cody-Rice writes,

“[A] fascinating and engrossing tale . . . a meticulously researched book . . . It told me, on nearly every page, something I did not know about the history of this province, of the lives lived here in the 17th century.”

Crosses in the Sky was also mentioned in an interview between actress & director Kaniehtiio Horn and interviewer Jim Slotek in Original Cin, posted on September 5. Check out the article here.

Grab Crosses in the Sky here!

CASE STUDY

Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet was included in the Globe and Mail‘s list of “Books we’re reading and loving in September.” The list was published on September 5, and you can check it out here.

Ian Brown writes,

“Graeme Macrae Burnet’s Case Study (longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize) is the best type of novel: the sharply crafted, deeply intelligent but compulsively readable kind . . . As soon as you stop reading, you’ll want to read it again.”

Get Case Study here!

Preorder Burnet’s forthcoming book, A Case of Matricide, here!

The Bibliophile: The Happiness Update

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I first came across Caroline Adderson‘s work in university. I’d recently fallen in love with the short story—“Do you want to read some good shit?” my second-year creative writing prof had asked, putting Clark Blaise’s Tribal Justice and A North American Education into my hands: I did, it was some good shit, and I was very hungry for more of the same. I was also hungry for a job that didn’t involve picking flecks of metal out of my flesh at the end of every shift, a job that didn’t have me dreaming of sulphurous light and didn’t leave my hand clenched throughout the night around the trigger of an invisible welding gun. I wanted to work in a bookshop. But no one seemed to want me to work in one. I wasn’t cool enough to work at South Shore Books, and the lady on Park Street who sold leftist philosophy scared me so much I couldn’t muster the courage to drop off a resume. The Bookmark and the chain stores downtown and at the mall never called me back. And Anne Beer at the Bookroom at the Court couldn’t afford staff, though she’d be happy to train me as a bookseller if I volunteered. So I did, riding my bike down to her shop one Sunday for my first shift. I spent all of it dragging an industrial carpet cleaner across her floors, wondering all the while what exactly this had to do with being a bookseller (Anne: I understand completely now). When I was finished, she let me select a few books as compensation. I remember grabbing a blue cloth hardcover of Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Dialogues, and then I started browsing in the CanLit section. This was a new concept to me. And there was Blaise, Man and His World, and from the same publisher, with the weird little figure on the spine, a story collection called Bad Imaginings, by Caroline Adderson. I’d never heard of her, but the stories sounded interesting and it was cheap, so I added it to the pile.

Photo: Caroline Adderson’s newest collection of short stories, A Way to Be Happy, comes out September 10!

If Blaise had been my gateway to the pleasures of the short story, it was perhaps Adderson who made me an addict. I read her first collection with intense pleasure, marveling at the range and style and humour. So many short story writers’ work seemed to me at the time to be set within the slightly fluctuating boundaries of their personal universes: in Bad Imaginings, one travelled galaxies, moving back and forth through time and historical situations. Here were stories that were rich and clear-eyed and playful and generous, stories that felt, and widely.

I’ve read almost everything that Caroline’s written since, all of her adult work and even, in bed with one of my children, much of her kid lit (Very Serious Children is a family favourite). All of it shows the same generosity and playfulness. I loved her novels, especially A History of Forgetting and Sitting Practice (we have republished a new version of the former, alongside Bad Imaginings: each is worth picking up). In 2006, another collection, Pleased to Meet You, was as rich and varied as her first. After that, the odd story would show up in magazines, The Walrus and The New Quarterly and elsewhere, and we even published a couple in CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries, and these I read (and sometimes reread) devoutly. But as time passed—and a lot of it did, nearly two decades worth—I became increasingly impatient for a new collection. This, for me, has always been Gold Mountain.

Photo: Check out some of these previously published books by Caroline Adderson!

This makes next Tuesday’s publication of Caroline’s A Way to Be Happy an especially gratifying experience. As a massive fan, I’ve waited too damn long. As a publisher, there’s no one in the country I’d wanted to work with on something new for a longer time. The stories in A Way to Be Happy range as widely and wildly—from a nineteenth-century women’s prison for the insane that gives me Small Things Like These vibes (though less cold, less moralizing, and with far more humour and compassion); to a story of a terminally ill Russian hitman, on what is almost certainly his final job, scouring his memory for something to take him into the darkness; to a story of two addicts crashing posh New Year’s Eve parties to rob the guests in hopes of funding their eventual recovery—as anything in her previous collections. The story “Homing” has made me cry every single time I’ve read it—and I’ve read it a lot!—and not from sadness but from hope, relief, and happiness. That’s a hard trick to manage, but Adderson does it. This is as generous (yes, that word, again) and as adventurous and as humane a collection as there can be.

Almost all of us have reservations, especially within the publishing industry, over the centrality of prizes in our literary culture. As a publisher, the relief I feel when a book of ours is nominated is almost immediately overwhelmed by a wave of disappointment and bitterness for those others on our list that didn’t make (apt phrase, this) the cut. (When the Giller people called to tell us Caroline’s book had made it onto the longlist, I had to bite my tongue not to respond with “And…?”) But I am nevertheless deeply grateful that Caroline’s work has been highlighted by the Giller jury, and if the nomination brings her more readers and more critical acclaim, as it should, because she deserves both, then I am doubly grateful. As I would be if you, dear reader, ordered the book from your local independent or through the website (or wherever else you get your books) after you finished this. Whether you read it cover to cover, or dip in a story at a time, I’m certain that reading this collection offers a way for you to be happy, as reading and working on it and now publishing it has made me so. And who, these days, couldn’t use a little help in that department

Dan Wells
Publisher

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THE WORLD AT MY BACK longlisted for the National Translation Award in Prose!

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We’re thrilled to share the news that The World at My Back by Thomas Melle, translated from the German by Luise von Flotow, has been longlisted for the 2024 National Translation Award in Prose! The longlist was announced on September 5, and you can view the full announcement here.

The judges citation reads,

“With The World at My Back, author Thomas Melle takes us into the harrowing world of bipolar disorder, chronicling the effect it has had on him and his relationships. Yet he does this with such remarkable aplomb that the reader now laughs, now cries at his predicament. As an author, playwright, and translator, Melle is very much embedded in the cultural life of a German writer, and it is against that backdrop that the episodes swing from manic to depressive to clinical—all cleverly captured in Luise von Flotow’s remarkably nimble translation.”

The NTAs are awarded annually in poetry and in prose to literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality. Established in 2018, the NTA, which is administered by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.

The shortlists for the National Translation Awards will be announced on October 10th, and the winners will be announced on October 26th at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation, in Milwaukee, WI. The winning translators will receive a $4,000 cash prize each.

Grab your copy of The World at My Back here!

ABOUT THE WORLD AT MY BACK

Longlisted for the 2024 National Translation Award in Prose • A Finalist for the German Book Prize • Translated into Eighteen Languages

Addicted to culture, author Thomas Melle has built up an impressive personal library. His heart is in these books, and he loves to feel them at his back, their promise and challenge, as he writes. But in the middle of a violent dissociative episode, when they become ballast to his increasingly manic self, he disperses almost overnight what had taken decades to gather. Nor is this all he loses: descending further into an incomprehensible madness, he loses friendships and his career as a novelist and celebrated playwright, but the most savage cruelty is that he no longer either knows or understands himself.

Vulnerable and claustrophobic, shattering and profoundly moving, Thomas Melle’s The World at My Back is a book dedicated to the impossibility of reclaiming what has been lost, its lines both a prayer and reminder that, on the other side of madness, other possibilities await.

ABOUT THOMAS MELLE

Born in Bonn, Germany, Thomas Melle studied at the University of Tübingen, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Free University of Berlin. His novels Sickster and 3000 Euros were finalists for German Book Prize in 2011 and 2014 respectively. Melle is also a prolific playwright and translator. His translations from English to German have ranged from plays by William Shakespeare to novels by William T. Vollmann. The World at My Back, also a finalist for the German Book Prize, was a bestseller in Germany. It was made into a highly successful stage play, and has been translated into eighteen languages. Thomas Melle lives in Berlin.

ABOUT LUISE VON FLOTOW

Luise von Flotow teaches translation studies at the University of Ottawa School of Translation and Interpretation. Her recent translations include, from German, They Divided the Sky by Christa Wolf, and Everyone Talks About the Weather…We Don’t by Ulrike Meinhof; and, from French, The Four Roads Hotel by France Théoret. She has twice been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Literary Translation.

A WAY TO BE HAPPY longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize!

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Biblioasis is thrilled to share that Caroline Adderson‘s A Way to Be Happy (Sep 10, 2024) has been longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize! The longlist was announced this morning, on September 4 at 11:30 AM, and you can view the full list here.

In a statement, Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells writes,

“All of us at Biblioasis couldn’t be happier for Caroline. I’ve been a fan of Caroline’s work, and her short fiction in particular, since first coming across her initial collection, Bad Imaginings, in a used bookstore when I was in university: I found the stories in that collection—which we eventually reissued at the press—smart, elegant, sharp-eyed, and generously funny. The same is true of the stories in this, her third collection, A Way to Be Happy, which is as wide-ranging and deeply imagined as a collection can be, and should serve to cement Caroline’s reputation as among the leading writers in the country.”

The Giller Prize is awarded annually to a Canadian novel or short story collection published that year. The winner receives $100,000 and the shortlisted authors each receive $10,000. The shortlist will be announced on Wednesday, October 9, and the winner will be announced Monday, November 18. This year’s 2024 Giller jury was comprised of authors Kevin Chong and Noah Richler, and singer-songwriter Molly Johnson. Previous winners of the prize include Sarah Bernstein, Suzette Mayr, Esi Edugyan, André Alexis, Michael Ondaatje, and Souvankham Thammavongsa.

Get your copy of A Way to Be Happy here!

ABOUT A WAY TO BE HAPPY

Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize

Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.

Credit: Jessica Whitman

Credit: Jessica Whitman

On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.

ABOUT CAROLINE ADDERSON

Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels (A Russian Sister, Ellen in Pieces, The Sky Is Falling, Sitting Practice, and A History of Forgetting), two previous collections of short stories (Pleased to Meet You and Bad Imaginings), as well as many books for young readers. Her award nominations include the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The recipient of three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement, Caroline lives and writes in Vancouver.

 

Media Hits & Awards: ON CLASS, MAY OUR JOY ENDURE, THE NOTEBOOK, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler (Sep 3, 2024), appeared on Lit Hub‘s list of “27 new books out today.” The list was published on September 3, and you can check it out here.

The list features Heather O’Neill’s blurb:

“Baroque and philosophical, May Our Joy Endure captures the sensibilities and excesses of the elite. A novel about the housing crisis told from the perspective of those causing it . . . Lambert’s writing is lyrical and rapturous. In this book, he proves himself a satirical and whimsical Robespierre, hailing from small town Quebec.”

May Our Joy Endure also featured on All Lit Up‘s list of “Book Recommendations to follow The Rage Letters.” The article was posted on August 28, and you can read it here.

Grab May Our Joy Endure here!

THE NOTEBOOK

The Notebook by Roland Allen (Sep 3, 2024) was excerpted in The Walrus. The excerpt, titled “Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era,” was published online on August 30, and you can read it in full here.

Roland Allen contributed a feature to the Globe and Mail, which published online on August 30. You can check out the article, “In a world of screens, the humble notebook remains the best way to learn,” here.

The Notebook was also reviewed in Angelus News on August 30. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Heather King writes,

“[The Notebook] celebrates the age-old practice of writing things down—numbers, images, thoughts, dreams—and charts the evolution of this handy, humble little item that many of us consider indispensable.”

Grab The Notebook here!

THE FUTURE

The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2023) was featured on CBC Books’ list, “These 14 writers recently won some of Canada’s biggest literary awards.” The list, which highlighted The Future‘s 2024 Canada Reads win and Carol Shields Prize longlisting, was posted on August 30, and you can read it here.

Grab The Future here!

THE PAGES OF THE SEA

The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk (Sep 17, 2024) appeared on Toronto.com’s list of “25 books worthy of a place at the top of your to-read pile.” The list was posted on September 1, and you can read it in full here.

Grab The Pages of the Sea here!

CROSSES IN THE SKY

Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie (May 21, 2024) was featured on 49th Shelf‘s list of recommendations, “Grappling With History.” The article was posted on August 26, and you can check it out here.

Marianne K. Miller writes,

“Mark Bourrie tackles the mythology around the Jesuit missionary priest, Jean de Brebeuf. It is a different story than the one you thought you knew.”

Get Crosses in the Sky here!

HELLO, HORSE

Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) was reviewed in Everything Zoomer! The review was posted online on August 15, and you can read it here.

Everything Zoomer writes,

“The year 2024 has Richard Kelly Kemick, whose wild imagination and fresh insights cast a spell in Hello, Horse; every entrancing story casts off in a different direction, with a genuine ‘wait? what?!’ moment you did not see coming . . . Kemick, a poet and playwright and National Magazine Award gold medal-winner, is one to watch.”

Grab Hello, Horse here!

AWARDS NEWS!

ON CLASS

We’re thrilled to share that On Class by Deborah Dundas is a nominee for the 2024 Heritage Toronto Book Award. The nominees were announced on September 3, 2024, and you can check out the full list here.

The Heritage Toronto Book Award highlights the breadth and depth of Toronto’s heritage, covering topics from music history, to public infrastructure, to immigration and multiculturalism. The award ceremony will take place on Monday, October 28, 2024 at The Carlu (444 Yonge Street).

Grab a copy of On Class here!

The Bibliophile: May You Enjoy Your Stuff

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Lots of exercises are tricky: distinguishing your backlist from your frontlist; packing up your life and moving to another city; burpees. In last week’s newsletter, Vanessa helped with the first item. This week, I plan to help with the second. May god help you with the third.

I have had at least seven different mailing addresses across three cities over the last ten years. It might not be surprising then that I’ve become proficient at packing my life into boxes and bags and have completely given up on owning hangable artwork (I get tattoos now). To clarify, I never set out to be a digital nomad or minimalist. My circumstances have dictated that I choose which physical things to own very carefully. Having (approximately) exactly what you need makes the packing and moving process a lot less painful than it otherwise would be. You don’t want to trip while you’re carrying a box of deteriorating Teflon non-stick pans down a winding staircase (true story).

Photo: You can pick up a copy of May Our Joy Endure September 3, 2024.

These days, I tend to only keep material goods that bring a high degree of utility and aesthetic value to my life. The mugs that I own, for instance, are all different sizes and represent my various interests from wabi-sabi interior design to Star Wars. I also tend to only keep books I would re-read, find beautiful to look at, and are comfortable to hold. Until our author interview with Kev Lambert, I hadn’t paid too much conscious attention to what these items say about me. Kev, by the way, is the author of Que Notre Joie Demeure, a runaway bestseller that was shortlisted for the 2023 Goncourt Prize, and won the 2023 Médicis Prize (making Kev the first Canadian writer in a couple of generations to win this most prestigious of French awards). Donald Winkler’s translation into English, May Our Joy Endure will be available September 3, 2024. The novel transports readers into the lives of the ultra-privileged, primarily following Céline Wachowski, an internationally renowned architect who is accused of destroying struggling neighborhoods in Montreal with her plans for a newly commissioned project—the Webuy Complex. In a time of widening wealth disparity and rising costs of living, Céline’s depicted lavish lifestyle is simultaneously alluring and terrible. When we asked about their intentions behind these details in May Our Joy Endure, Kev shared some nice food for thought about our relationship to material things:

Q:

Let’s talk about the stuff in this novel, from the fashion (Comme des Garçons, Vivienne Westwood and Marie St. Pierre), to the books (from Lacan, to Tremblay, to Proust), to the wine, (they don’t drink white, they drink Sancerre), to the architectural materials (one of the characters has Corten Steel on the front door of his house which is beautiful but he fears was too trendy and is now dated). This is a novel about material culture that is very detailed in terms of what our culture is made of and how it is all put together. Why are these details important to both the novel’s aesthetic and its ambivalent perspective on cultural “makers” to use an ascendant if dubious term.

A:

There’s a sociological aspect to these decisions: these are all signs of distinction. Céline is ultra-rich but she doesn’t see herself as vulgar. Even if Céline is, in fact, nouveau riche because her money isn’t old, she certainly doesn’t want to be seen as nouveau riche, because she wants to be seen as a kind of radical aesthetic figure of the avant-garde. She has to communicate this in her style. She couldn’t wear Chanel because it’s too conservative and classic. So there’s an aspect of the referentiality that is character development. While I’m critical of these objects that are completely caught up in a capitalist culture of consumerism, there are still brilliant people who have thought about these clothes in an aesthetic way. You don’t need to own the object to see it and to understand its value. These materials in the novel also operate as a kind of intertextuality—the fashion designers the characters wear, the art on their walls, the food they eat, the opening nights they attend, it’s never insignificant. It’s a way of winking at the reader, of encouraging them to gain some critical distance from the world of Céline and of the novel at one moment and of pulling them in closer the next.

Photo: Kev’s Biblioasis books May Our Joy Endure, Querelle of Roberval, and You Will Love What You Have Killed.

So, as it is at the conclusion of a move, there seems to be much to unpack in May Our Joy Endure. The things we own might be valuable insofar as they: help us do things, mean something to us, and reflect us back into the world. To make matters more complex, this value might change over time as when our phone batteries die and cease to function (thanks to planned obsolescence) or when you can suddenly pull a leopard print coat from the back of your closet to look cool on a night out (thanks to the trending ‘mob wife aesthetic’). And presumably, we tend to hold onto our valuables and are more willing to let go of the less valuable. Quick—you can only grab three things on your way out of your burning home—what are you rescuing? The exercise of moving homes forces you to entertain a less intense version of this thought experiment, though it still confronts you about your relationship to everything you own.

Unlike the nouveau riche characters in May Our Joy Endure, I have grown into the habit of gently decluttering regularly and being very slow to purchase or borrow new-to-me things. My turnover of things has decreased, which in turn, has increased my awareness and appreciation for the things I have. It just so happens that this also reduces the stress associated with packing up your life and moving onto your next chapter since you already have a good idea of what to bring.

Julia Lei
Publicist

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Keep up with us!

Media Hits: THE NOTEBOOK, A CASE OF MATRICIDE, THE UTOPIAN GENERATION, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

THE NOTEBOOK

The Notebook by Roland Allen (Sep 3, 2024) was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal! The article was published online on August 23, and is available to read here.

Reviewer Meghan Cox Gurdon writes,

“Bold and thrilling . . . informative and uplifting, The Notebook may leave you feeling that you should chuck away your smartphone, pick up a nice, clean journal and start jotting.”

The Notebook was featured in Publishers Weekly‘s list of “Eight New Books Indie Booksellers Want You to Read.” The list was posted on August 16, and you can check it out here.

Phoenix Books book buyer Laurel Rhame wrote,

“I love obscure, strange, or hyper-focused histories, and this is the first history of the notebook—a tool that completely changed humanity. I can already tell this is going to be my big gift book for the holiday season. It’s perfect for the writers, artists, or engineers in your life. And of course for the history buffs.”

The Notebook also appeared on Kirkus Reviews‘ list, “150 Most Anticipated Books of the Fall.” The article was posted online on August 20, and you can read it here.

Grab The Notebook here!

 

THE UTOPIAN GENERATION

The Utopian Generation by Pepetela, translated by David Brookshaw (Aug 12, 2024), was featured in The African Report. The review and interview with Pepetela was published online on August 12, and you can read it here.

Reviewer Olivia Snaije calls it:

“A groundbreaking book . . . In The Utopian Generation, perhaps closest to [Pepetela’s] personal experience, the characters fight for the liberation of Angola with the hope of building an egalitarian society. Through the individual characters and the choices they make, the reader makes a 30-year journey through the complexity of decolonisation in Angola.”

The Utopian Generation was also featured on The Daily Kos‘s list of “Contemporary Fiction Views: It’s new books day!” The list was posted on August 13, and you can check it out here.

Grab The Utopian Generation here.

 

A CASE OF MATRICIDE

A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Nov 12, 2024) was reviewed in Publishers Weekly. The review was published online on August 16, and is available to read here.

Publishers Weekly writes,

“[A Case of Matricide] serves up a tantalizing blend of psychological thrills and small-town life . . . a convincing depiction of bureaucratic and provincial rot. Fans of the series will be pleased.”

Order A Case of Matricide here!

SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE

Sorry About the Fire by Colleen Coco Collins (Apr 2, 2024) was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada. The review was published in their September print issue.

The LRC writes,

“Sorry About the Fire introduces readers to an intrepid thinker and original writer who seems to relish nature as much as her Irish, French, and Odawa heritage. If Collins can teach readers just one thing, surely it’s a sense of surprise, so that we too might say, ‘I’m up in my head / tread, tread, tread, tread, / and you can’t hold a candle to this.'”

Get Sorry About the Fire here!

BURN MAN

Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Burn Man: Selected Stories (Nov 21 2023), was interviewed on the podcast Craftwork. The episode aired on August 8, and you can listen to the conversation in full here.

Grab Burn Man here!

ON CLASS

Deborah Dundas, author of On Class (May 9, 2023), was interviewed by Nathan Whitlock on the podcast What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books. The episode aired on August 19, and you can listen to it here.

Grab On Class here!

THE FULL-MOON WHALING CHRONICLES

The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles by Jason Guriel (Aug 1, 2023) appeared in 49th Shelf‘s list “Astonish and Renew: Books With a Sense of Play.” The list was posted on August 22, and you can check it out here.

Rod Moody-Corbett calls it:

“[A] brilliant second novel . . . expansive and epic and intellectually enduring.”

Get The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles here!

Check out the companion novel, Forgotten Work, here!

The Bibliophile: Frontlist is Backlist

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When frontlist is backlist . . .

Last week Dan outlined one of the eternal conflicts of independent publishing: the challenge of keeping books available for readers to discover, in an industry that is perpetually forward-focused, and within the pesky confines of time and space, i.e. in the face of return windows and the media’s own short attention spans, as well as the physical limitations of our vast yet rapidly overflowing warehouse shelves. (Speaking of the warehouse, our warehouse sale—200+ Biblioasis titles for five bucks a pop—continues through Labour Day.)

Given our ongoing obstinacy in the face of short (shelf and otherwise) lifespans, there’s a particular pleasure in saying that the most recent hot new Biblioasis release happens to be a book written thirty years ago: The Utopian Generation, by the great Angolan writer Pepetela. A Geração da Utopia was first published in its original Portuguese in 1992 by Dom Quixote. (And no, a windmill is never just a windmill.)

Photo: A copy of The Utopian Generation waits impatiently at Biblioasis Bookshop for you.

The Utopian Generation tells the story of four young revolutionaries and their fight for Angolan independence from Portugal. The four are living in Lisbon at the start of the War of Independence, and each must make choices that will have dire consequences for their futures. The novel follows them on their individual trajectories, from the optimism and passion inspired by the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), to guerilla combat in Angola and the disillusionment of world-tested ideals and their gradual understanding of the self-renewing global hegemony of capitalism.

Richly detailed in its depictions of African and Portuguese culture, and peopled by vividly drawn characters whose lives reveal intricate insights into the racial and psychological tensions of colonialism, The Utopian Generation is widely considered in the Portuguese-speaking world the seminal novel of African decolonization, companion to novels like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood, Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. You’ve certainly at least heard of these books, but without an English-language translation available, Pepetela’s novel has remained largely undiscovered outside of Lusophone cultures. We are terrifically excited that this edition, brought to us by longtime editor Stephen Henighan, and masterfully translated by the great David Brookshaw, is poised to change that fact.

Photo: Stephen Henighan (left) presents Pepetela (right) with copies of the English translation of his novel.

. . . and the future is the past

We’ve worked with David Brookshaw on a number of projects, among them the novels and short fiction of Mozambican Mia Couto. The Utopian Generation is a book he’s known and loved—and taught—for as many years as English-language readers have been unaware of it. We sat down to ask him a few questions about translation, but also about the context in which the novel was written, and what he said confirmed our strident belief that some of our most important lessons have already been learned, and can be applied anew to our contemporary concerns.

Biblioasis: The way the novel represents the diversity of Africa and Angola, culturally, racially, and the ways the struggle for independence united people across differences, is fascinating. Can you speak to the ways this diversity makes The Utopian Generation such a dynamic novel?

DB: One of the great challenges the Angolan nationalists had to face was how to forge a sense of common purpose and identity in a country whose borders had been created artificially by competing European colonial powers in the 19th century, to the extent that an African ethnic or linguistic group might find itself divided by a hastily drawn international frontier. This was the case of the old Kingdom of the Congo, part of which found itself owing its allegiance to Belgium, and the other part to Portugal as a result of the Congress of Berlin in 1885.

When the anti-colonial struggle started to gather strength from the 1940s, the challenge in Angola and the other territories ruled by Portugal was to overcome local rivalries, which had often been stoked up by the colonial authorities. In Angola, these nationalists embarked on a journey that might lead to a sense of “angolanidade” (Angolanity). Pepetela’s novel confronts this problem through the interactions of its characters (most of whom come from different ethnic, regional, or linguistic backgrounds), and their discussions, whether in the student canteen in Lisbon, or while sitting around a campfire in the middle of the Angolan bush, or, after independence, by a beach in southern Angola or in an apartment in Luanda.

The dynamism of the novel is propelled forward not only by the changing experiences of the characters in the different historical moments and locations, and their shifting ideals (or lack of ideals), but by debate and conversation.

Photo: Angola, Portuguese troops gathered in Luanda, 1961. Designer Zoe Norvell found this photo from the American Geographical Society Library (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries) and incorporated it into the book cover.

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Speaking of conversation . . .

We were delighted to see Olivia Snaije’s interview with Pepetela up at The Africa Report last week. Snaije outlines some of the autobiographical elements of the novel’s construction—like his protagonists, Pepetela was a student in Lisbon at the outbreak of the war, and, like two of them, he fought as a guerilla for the MPLA—and also shares the astonishing circumstances of the book’s composition and the impact of its publication:

Pepetela wrote the nearly 500-page The Utopian Generation in just one year while on a writer’s residency in Berlin. “We thought we would create paradise, but things didn’t turn out how we had thought they would,” Luanda-based Pepetela tells The Africa Report from Lisbon.

When the book was published in 1992, it became a bestseller and had the effect of a bomb due to its disillusionment and critical stance towards the corrupt post-independence government.

“My friends with the MPLA in Angola weren’t happy at all,” says Pepetela, adding that he wasn’t persecuted but that many of his friends dropped him. Today, he says, “these friends are even more critical than I was”.

The late academic Fernando Arenas wrote that The Utopian Generation was “the first novel to offer a sustained, probing, heart-wrenching as well as in-depth critique of the postcolonial national project.”

Photo: Pepetela, author of The Utopian Generation. Credit: Jorge Nogueira

You can read the interview in its entirety here. And, thanks to Stephen Henighan and David Brookshaw, you can now read a classic of African literature in English, just thirty-two years after its original publication—thereby proving once again: backlist is fiction.

Vanessa Stauffer
Managing Editor

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Keep up with us!

Media Hits: HELLO HORSE, COCKTAIL, COMRADE PAPA, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

HELLO, HORSE

Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) was reviewed in The Miramichi Reader! The review was published on August 5, and you can read it in full here.

Reviewer Brett Josef Grubisic writes,

“Restless, exuberant, meandering, funny, inventive, and really quite bonkers . . . Either Kemick is one of those rare, savant-like authors whose outpouring is naturally (and enviably) stylish, or he tempers what seems to be a natural, baroque extravagance with careful, word-by-word revision. Whatever the case, readers will notice—and ought to appreciate—those sentences . . . All in all, Hello, Horse gallops and canters, dazzles and makes a splash. Prepare to be wowed.”

Hello, Horse was also reviewed by Jessica Poon in The BC Review on August 8, which you can check out here. Poon writes,

“Overall, Kemick has balanced visually rich absurdity . . . and the general malaise of youth with admirable, poetic flair. This is an unapologetically unique slice of Canadiana.”

Lit Hub also featured the collection on their list of “26 new books out today” on August 6—you can check out the full list here. The list features Burn Man: Selected Stories author Mark Anthony Jarman’s blurb of the collection:

“Hello, Horse is beguiling and wondrous, with talking dogs and nuns at the end of the world, images that linger with strange pleasure; Richard Kelly Kemick is a stellar wordsmith.”

Grab Hello, Horse here!

A WAY TO BE HAPPY

A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson (Sep 10, 2024) was featured in Quill & Quire‘s “2024 Fall Preview: Short Fiction, Graphic Novels, and Poetry.” The preview was posted on July 31, and you can check out the full list here.

Cassandra Drudi writes,

“The characters in these stories from veteran of the form Caroline Adderson range from thieving addicts to a Russian hit man to a middle-aged man facing a routine colonoscopy. Through these varied characters and their disparate conflicts, Adderson explores happiness—how we find it and what it means when we do.”

Order A Way to Be Happy here!

COCKTAIL

Cocktail by Lisa Alward (Sep 12, 2023) was included in 49th Shelf‘s list of “Short Stories for Summer Reading.” The article was published on August 8, and you can read it in full here.

Danila Botha writes,

“The winner of this year’s Danuta Gleed award, this collection is absolutely masterful. When a writer writes with such precision and authorial control, it’s such a joy to read their work. There’s a stylistic elegance that I admire so much, the way that Alward disrupts domesticity, the tensions inherent in her stories, her expert pacing and her beautiful descriptions are all incredibly impressive.”

Pick up Cocktail here!

COMRADE PAPA

Comrade Papa by GauZ’, translated by Frank Wynne (Oct 8, 2024), was reviewed by Lara Pawson in the Times Literary Supplement on August 1. You can read the full review here.

Pawson writes,

“Only a bold writer in command of their talent could take on such a perilous and vast subject and come out, with laughter and love, on top . . . If you are foolish enough to open this book with a set of assumptions about where it will go, prepare to be wrong-footed . . . Expect to see GauZ’ back on the shortlists with this superlative work of fiction.”

Order Comrade Papa here!

THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

Alex Pugsley, author of The Education of Aubrey McKee (May 7, 2024), was interviewed on Toronto Met Radio’s “All My Books”! The interview aired on July 31, and you can listen to it (beginning at 31:20) here.

Get The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Check out the first book, Aubrey McKee here!