Best of Fall 2013: five books by Toronto writers you absolutely must read
Best of Fall 2013: five books by Toronto writers you absolutely must read
1 | Projection, by Priscila Uppal
The poet and novelist was abandoned by her mother when she was eight. Twenty years later, she met the woman, now a film reviewer in Brazil. Though the two share a love of cinema, this heartbreaking memoir doesn’t have a Hollywood ending. Sept. 14.
2 | The Great Calamitous Tale of Johan Thoms, by Ian Thornton
Thornton gives early 20th-century history a bawdy but charming twist in this tale of a Sarajevo student with an oversized cranium and serious chess skills who must flee the country after inadvertently setting the First World War in motion. Sept. 24.
3 | Cataract City, by Craig Davidson
The author of Rust and Bone and the king of Canadian dude-lit returns with another bare-knuckled exploration of masculine behaviour. Two Niagara Falls pals, connected by a horrifying childhood incident, conspire to bring down a local criminal. Sept. 28.
4 | Blood: The Stuff of Life, by Lawrence Hill
For this year’s CBC Massey Lectures, the author of The Book of Negroes sinks his teeth into our common red stuff and examines how, through the years, the notion of blood has defined perceptions of racial and personal identity. Sept. 28.
5 | The War That Ended Peace, by Margaret MacMillan
Nearly a century after the start of a grinding and bloody conflict that decimated a generation, the bestselling historian brings us a companion volume to her Paris 1919, in which she outlines just how the world got itself into such an awful mess. Oct. 29.
By Andrew D’Cruz, Sue Carter Flinn, Emily Landau, Alison Mah, Jason McBride, Courtney Shea, Stéphanie Verge, Chris Webster and Nathan Whitlock | Photographs: Projection courtesy of Dundurn; Cataract courtesy of Random House; Blood courtesy of House of Anansi; Peace courtesy of Penguin
