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Canadian authors in the news

It’s a literary love-in for Canadian authors in the news this week. Margaret Atwood discusses her latest, Payback, in London’s The Times, canada.com, and the Globe and Mail. From the Times:

Now, in her new nonfiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth — a fascinating, freewheeling examination of ideas of debt, balance and revenge in history, society and literature — Atwood has again struck upon our most current anxieties. As the credit crunch grounds airlines and topples banks, nobody can escape the spectre of debt. So where does she keep her crystal ball?

“It was a coincidence,” she claims. “I chose this topic several years ago and then found myself writing the book while all this was happening — the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and these ads plastering the Underground: ‘We will help you with your debt’, ‘Why pay more?’, ‘Declare personal bankruptcy!’.”

Meanwhile, Joseph and Amanda Boyden were interviewed on CBC.ca this week, and we learn that:

In addition to wedding bands and a home, the Boydens share a preoccupation with issues of race. Both of their new novels update an antiquated conversation about segregation and overt oppression to probe the consequences of long-term poverty, limited education and systemic discrimination. Neither shies away from imagining — or inhabiting — the Other.

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