Fall preview 2011: Canadian fiction

In the July/August issue, Q&Q looks ahead at the fall season’s biggest books.

NOVELS

One of the most anticipated releases of the fall season is surely the new novel from internationally acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje, his first since 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award winner Divisadero. Set in the early 1950s, The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart, $32 cl., Sept.) tells the story of an 11-year-old boy crossing the Indian Ocean on a liner bound for England, and the mysterious prisoner shackled on board. • Also from M&S is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s first novel in eight years. Set in the late 19th-century Canadian and American West, A Good Man ($32.99 cl., Sept.) is the third book in a loose trilogy that also includes The Last Crossing (2003) and The Englishman’s Boy, which won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award. • A third GG winner has a new novel out this season: David Gilmour, who won in 2005 for his previous novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China. Gilmour returns with The Perfect Order of Things (Thomas Allen Publishers, $26.95 cl., Sept.), the story of a man who revisits traumatic and life-changing incidents from his past.

Marina Endicott follows up her Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted 2008 novel Good to a Fault with The Little Shadows (Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), about three sisters who become vaudeville singers following the death of their father. • Acclaimed novelist Helen Humphreys returns with an historical novel set in France during the Napoleonic period. The Reinvention of Love (HarperCollins Canada, $29.99 cl., Sept.) is about a French journalist whose affair with Victor Hugo’s wife causes a scandal (as it might be expected to do).

Brian Francis’s debut novel, Fruit, was a runner-up in the 2009 edition of CBC’s battle of the books, Canada Reads. His second novel, Natural Order (Doubleday Canada, $29.95 cl., Aug.), tells the story of a mother who is forced to confront the secrets she has kept about her son when her carefully constructed life is overturned by a startling revelation. • Kevin Chong returns to fiction with his first novel in a decade. Beauty Plus Pity (Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95 pa., Sept.) follows an Asian-Canadian slacker in Vancouver whose incipient modelling career is derailed by the death of his father and the sudden departure of his fiancée.

Requiem (HarperCollins Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), the third novel from Frances Itani, is about a Japanese-Canadian who embarks upon a cross-country journey of discovery following the death of his wife. • Anita Rau Badami follows her best-selling novels Tamarind Mem and The Hero’s Walk with Tell It to the Trees (Knopf Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), about the Dharma family – the authoritarian Vikram, the gourmand Suman, and the old storyteller Akka. When the Dharmas’ tenant, Anu, turns up dead on their doorstep, the family’s long-buried secrets begin to boil over. • Gayla Reid returns with her first novel since 2002’s Closer Apart. Set during the Spanish Civil War, Come from Afar (Cormorant Books, $32 cl., Aug.) tells the story of an Australian nurse who falls into a relationship with a Canadian soldier from the International Brigade.

Haitian expat Dany Laferrière is back with his third novel in translation in three years. The Return (Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95 pa., Aug.) tells the story of a 23-year-old Haitian named Dany who flees Baby Doc Duvalier’s repressive regime and relocates to Montreal. Thirty-three years later, Dany learns of his father’s death in New York City, and plots a return to his native country. David Homel translates. • Another Montreal resident, poet Sina Queyras, has a novel out this fall, the author’s first. Autobiography of Childhood (Coach House Books, $20.95 pa., Oct.) is about one day in the lives of five siblings haunted by the death of a brother years before. • Infrared (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl., Sept.), the new novel by Nancy Huston, is about a photographer who travels to Tuscany with her father and stepmother. Employing internal dialogues with the photographer’s mental doppelgänger, Huston opens up her hero for exposure and provides an intimate picture of her interior life.

CanLit mainstay David Helwig returns with a novella, his first since 2007’s Smuggling Donkeys. Killing McGee (Oberon, $38.95 cl., $18.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a professor’s dual obsessions with the assassination of D’Arcy McGee and the disappearance of one of his students. • Toronto-based poet Dani Couture returns with her first novel, a surreal and iconoclastic take on that perennial CanLit staple: the family drama. Algoma (Invisible Publishing, $19.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a family attempting to cope with the aftermath of a young child falling through the ice and drowning. • Shari Lapeña also has a novel about a perennial CanLit concern: raising money to allow one time to write poetry. Happiness Economics (Brindle & Glass, $19.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of a stalled poet who takes a job writing advertising copy to start a poetry foundation.

Jamaican-born novelist, poet, and non-fiction author Olive Senior returns to long-form fiction with Dancing Lessons (Cormorant, $22 pa., Aug.), about a woman looking back on her life after a hurricane destroys her home. • Memoirist Frances Greenslade (A Pilgrim in Ireland, By the Secret Ladder) has a debut novel out this August. Shelter (Random House Canada, $29.95 cl.) is a coming of age story about two sisters searching for their mother, who abandoned them after their father was killed in a logging accident.

Not one, but two novels this season extend the burgeoning CanLit focus on towns that have been/are about to be flooded (after Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists, Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault, and Michael V. Smith’s Progress). Tristan Hughes’s Eye Lake (Coach House, $19.95 pa., Oct.) is about the town of Crooked River, Ontario. Named for a river that was diverted to make way for a mine, the town harbours secrets that surface when the river reclaims its original course. • And in September, Goose Lane Editions will publish Riel Nason’s The Town that Drowned ($19.95 pa.), about the suspicions, secrets, and emotions that flare up when the township of Haverton is scheduled to be flooded to allow for the construction of a massive dam.

Edward Riche follows up his Thomas Head Raddall Award winner The Nine Planets with Easy to Like (House of Anansi Press, $29.95 cl., Sept.), a satire about a screenwriter and oenophile who dreams of travelling to Paris, but is trapped in Canada by an expired passport and a growing Hollywood scandal. Relocating to Toronto, he bluffs his way into the upper echelons of the CBC. • Former president and CEO of Penguin Canada, David Davidar was forced out of his position under a cloud of scandal after accusations of sexual harassment. Davidar’s new novel, Ithaca (M&S, $29.99 cl., Oct.), is, perhaps not coincidentally, about the rise and fall of a publishing star.

Canadian literary icon Michel Tremblay returns with a new novel, the first in a trilogy. Set in 1913, Crossing the Continent (Talonbooks, $18.95 pa., Oct.) takes the author’s characters out of Quebec for the first time, to tell the backstory of the people who populate his Chroniques du Plateau-Mont-Royal series. Long-time Tremblay collaborator Sheila Fischman translates.

A resident of St. John’s, Newfoundland, lately one of the most fertile spots for Canadian writing, Michelle Butler Hallett crafts genre-busting stories and novels that frequently experiment with gender and perspective. Her new novel, Deluded Your Sailors (Creative Book Publishing, $21.95 pa., Sept.), focuses on the culture industry from the perspective of Nichole Wright, who makes a discovery that puts a government-funded tourism project in jeopardy, and a shape-shifting minister named Elias Winslow. • Another Newfoundland native, Kate Story, has a novel out with Creative this season. The follow-up to 2008’s Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore ($21.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of Pearl Lewis, an emotionally damaged, charismatic woman who is seen at different stages in her life.

In 1972, Christina Parr returns to her hometown of Parr’s Landing, a place she fled years earlier. The dirty secret of Parr’s Landing? A 300-year-old vampire resides in the caves of the remote mining town. Christina learns why she should have stayed away in Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night (ChiZine Publications, $17.95 pa., Oct.). • English literature professor Janey Erlickson struggles to make headway in her academic career while caring for a tyrannical toddler in Sue Sorensen’s comic novel A Large Harmonium (Coteau Books, $21 pa., Sept.). • Paul Brenner, a Vancouver lawyer, dines with his son, Daniel, one Friday evening. The next day, Brenner receives word that his son has been murdered. Hold Me Now (Freehand Books, $21.95 pa., Oct.), the first novel from Stephen Gauer, examines a father’s grief and a lawyer’s faith in the legal system.

SHORT FICTION

Anyone who has ever wondered what might transpire if the author of Bigfoot’s autobiography were to illustrate a story collection by Canada’s reigning postmodern ironist can stop wondering. October sees the publication of Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People (Random House Canada, $24 cl.), the first collaboration between author Douglas Coupland and well-known illustrator Graham Roumieu.

D.W. Wilson currently lives in London, England, but is a native of B.C.’s Kootenay Valley. The winner of the inaugural Man Booker Prize Scholarship from the University of East Anglia, Wilson’s debut collection, Once You Break a Knuckle (Hamish Hamilton Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), is a suite of stories about good people doing bad things.

Novelist Anne DeGrace has her first collection of short stories on tap for September. Flying with Amelia (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl.) spans the 20th century and crosses vast swathes of territory. Wireless telegraphy, German POWs in Manitoba, the Great Depression, and the FLQ crisis all crop up in her stories. • David Whitton’s story “Twilight of the Gods” was included in the 2010 sci-fi anthology Darwin’s Bastards. The story also appears in Whitton’s first solo collection, The Reverse Cowgirl (Freehand, $21.95 pa., Oct.), which sports the most sexually suggestive title for a collection of CanLit stories since Pasha Malla’s The Withdrawal Method.

Toronto writer Rebecca Rosenblum follows up her Metcalf-Rooke Award–winning debut collection Once (a Q&Q book of the year for 2009) with The Big Dream (Biblioasis, $19.95 pa., Sept.), a collection of linked stories about the lives of workers at Dream, Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher. • The Maladjusted (Thistledown Press, $18.95 pa., Sept.), Toronto writer Derek Hayes’ debut collection, focuses on people who run afoul of the dictates of polite society. • Also from Thistledown, Britt Holmström’s Leaving Berlin ($18.95 pa., Sept.) examines contemporary women in both Canadian and European settings.

The fine print: Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2011. All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q’s press time. • Titles that have appeared in previous previews do not appear here.

2011 ReLit longlist revealed

The very long list of nominees for the 2011 ReLit Awards, which celebrates novels, poetry, and short fiction titles published by Canadian independent presses, has been announced. ECW Press leads this year’s longlist with nine nominees.

NOVELS:

• Sandra Beck, John Lavery (House of Anansi Press)
• Étienne’s Alphabet, James King (Cormorant Books)
• Isobel & Emile, Alan Reed (Coach House Books)
• The Cube People, Christian McPherson (Nightwood Editions)
• Glenn Piano by Gladys Priddis, Jason Dickson (BookThug)
• The Obituary, Gail Scott (Coach House)
• How Should a Person Be? Sheila Heti (Anansi)
• A Thoroughly Wicked Woman, Betty Keller (Caitlin Press)
• When Fenelon Falls, Dorothy Ellen Palmer (Coach House)
• Lethal Rage, Brent Pilkey (ECW Press)
• Hope Burned, Brent LaPorte (ECW)
• The Matter of Sylvie, Lee Kvern (Brindle & Glass)
• A Likely Story, Eric Wright (Cormorant)
• Follow Me Down, Marc Strange (ECW)
• New Under the Sun, Kevin Major (Cormorant)
• The Bourgeois Empire, Evie Christie (ECW)
• One Bloody Thing After Another, Joey Comeau (ECW)
• Far to Go, Alison Pick (Anansi)
• Annabel, Kathleen Winter (Anansi)
• Baldur’s Song, David Arnason (Turnstone Press)
• In Plain Sight, Mike Knowles (ECW)
• Flight, Darren Hynes (Killick Press)
• Cupids, Paul Butler (Flanker Press)
• Book, Ken Sparling (Pedlar Press)
• Flyways, Devin Krukoff (Thistledown Press)
• Spaz, Bonnie Bowman (Anvil Press)
• Of Water and Rock, Thomas Armstrong (DC Books)
• Something Remains, Hassan Ghedi Santur (Dundurn Press)
• The Evolution of Inanimate Objects, Harry Karlinsky (Insomniac Press)
• Solitaria, Genni Gunn (Signature Editions)
• Waiting for Ricky Tantrum, Jules Lewis (Dundurn)
• Letters to Omar, Rachel Wyatt (Coteau Books)
• The Goon, Jerrod Edson (Oberon Press)
• Raising Orion, Lesley Choyce (Thistledown)
• The Master of Happy Endings, Jack Hodgins (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• In the Fabled East, Adam Lewis Schroeder (D&M Publishers)
• Blood Relatives, Craig Francis Power (Pedlar)
• The Glass Harmonica, Russell Wangersky (Thomas Allen)
• This Book Will Not Save Your Life, Michelle Berry (Enfield & Wizenty)
• Anderson, Michael Boyce (Pedlar)
• Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed, Jacob Wren (Pedlar)
• Drive-by Saviours, Chris Benjamin (Roseway Publishing)
• Gaze, Keith Cadieux (Quattro Books)
• Sheilagh’s Brush, Maura Hanrahan (Inanna Publications)
• Combat Camera, A.J. Somerset (Biblioasis)
• Victim Rights, Norah McClintock (Red Deer)
• Good Evening, Central Laundromat, Jason Heroux (Quattro)
• Black Alley, Dawn M. Cornelio (Biblioasis)
• Krakow Melt, Daniel Allen Cox (Arsenal Pulp Press)
• The Hungry Mirror, Lisa de Nikolits (Inanna)
• Firmament, Bruce Johnson (Gaspereau Press)
• Pitouie, Derek Winkler (The Workhorsery)
• The Lucky Child, Marianne Apostolides (Mansfield Press)
• The Case of Owen Williams, Allan Donaldson (Vagrant Press)
• L (And Things Come Apart), Ian Orti (Invisible Publishing)
• Retina Green, Reinhard Filter (Quattro)
• Sweet England, Steve Weiner (New Star Books)
• Real Gone, Jim Christy (Quattro)
• The Find, Kathy Page (McArthur & Company)
• Confessions of a Reluctant Cougar, Myna Wallin (Tightrope Books)
• Tobacco Wars, Paul Seesequasis (Quattro)

POETRY:

• Floating Bodies, Julie Roorda (Guernica Editions)
• Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon, Ray Hsu (Nightwood)
• Children of Ararat, Keith Garebian (Frontenac House)
• Indexical Elegies, Jon Paul Fiorentino (Coach House)
• Falling Blues, Jannie Edwards (Frontenac)
• Marimba Forever, Jim Christy (Guernica)
• The Porcupinity of the Stars, Gary Barwin (Coach House)
• Patient Frame, Steven Heighton (Anansi)
• Seeing Lessons, Catherine Owen (Wolsak and Wynn)
• Against the Hard Angle, Matt Robinson (ECW)
• You Know Who You Are, Ian Williams (Wolsak and Wynn)
• Fieldnotes, Kate Eichhorn (BookThug)
• Watermelon Kindness, David Donnell (ECW)
• The Inquisition Years, Jen Currin (Coach House)
• O Resplandor, Erin Mouré (Anansi)
• Light and Time, Michael Mirolla (Guernica)
• Bloom, Michael Lista (Anansi)
• Nature, Mark Truscott (BookThug)
• Casanova in Venice, Kildare Dobbs (The Porcupine’s Quill)
• Update, Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler (Snare Books)
• Living Under Plastic, Evelyn Lau (Oolichan Books)
• The Little Seamstress, Phil Hall (Pedlar)
• Winterkill, Catherine Graham (Insomniac)
• Tiny, Frantic, Stronger, Jeff Latosik (Insomniac)
• The Walnut-Cracking Machine, Julie Berry (BuschekBooks)
• Ghost Music, Mark D. Dunn (BuschekBooks)
• Return from Erebus, Julia McCarthy (Brick Books)
• The Scare in the Crow, Tammy Armstrong (Goose Lane Editions)
• The Emperor’s Sofa, Greg Santos (DC Books)
• Why Are You So Long and Sweet? David W. McFadden (Insomniac)
• Mammoth, Larissa Andrusyshyn (DC Books)
• A Pirouette and Gone, E.D. Blodgett (BuschekBooks)
• Swimming Ginger, Gary Geddes (Goose Lane)
• Sweet, Dani Couture (Pedlar)
• Here Is Where We Disembark, Clea Roberts (Freehand Books)
• Every Day in the Morning (Slow), Adam Seelig (New Star)
• Hump, Ariel Gordon (Palimpsest Press)
• The Unsettled, Mona Fertig (Kalamalka Press)
• Soul on Standby, Antony Di Nardo (Exile Press)
• Hold the Note, Domenico Capilongo (Quattro)
• Traumatology, Priscila Uppal (Exile)
• Sew Him Up, Beatriz Hausner (Quattro)
• Hard Feelings, Sheryda Warrener (Snare)
• A Good Time Had By All, Meaghan Strimas (Exile)
• The Lateral, Jake Kennedy (Snare)
• The Sylvia Hotel Poems, George Fetherling (Quattro)
• The Good News About Armageddon, Steve McOrmond (Brick)
• Psychic Geographies and Other Topics, Gregory Betts (Quattro)
• Alien, Correspondent, Antony Di Nardo (Brick)
• The Stream Exposed with All its Stones, D.G. Jones (Signal Editions)
• An Open Door in the Landscape, Elisabeth Harvor (Palimpsest)
• The Philosophy of as if, Fraser Sutherland (Bookland Press)
• Circus, Michael Harris (Signal)
• Syrinx and Systole, Matthew Remski (Quattro)
• The Day Is a Cold Grey Stone, Allan Safarik (Hagios Press)
• The Crow’s Vow, Susan Briscoe (Signal)
• The Mourner’s Book of Albums, Daniel Scott Tysdal (Tightrope)
• The Nights Also, Anna Swanson (Tightrope)
• Don’t Get Lonely Don’t Get Lost, Elisabeth Belliveau (Conundrum Press)
• Fallout, Sandra Ridley (Hagios)
• Stray Dog Embassy, Natasha Nuhanovic (Mansfield Press)
• At the Gates of the Theme Park, Peter Norman (Mansfield)
• Cathedral, Pamela Porter (Ronsdale Press)
• Goodbye, Ukulele, Leigh Nash (Mansfield)
• Come Closer, Leanne Averbach (Tightrope)
• The Stonehaven Poems, R.D. Patrick (Your Scrivener Press)
• I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being, Johanna Skibsrud (Gaspereau)
• Welling, Margaret Christakos (Your Scrivener)
• The Annotated Bee & Me, Tim Bowling (Gaspereau)
• The Art of Breathing Underwater, Cathy Ford (Mother Tongue Publishing)

SHORT FICTION:

• Ravenna Gets, Tony Burgess (Anvil)
• Ronald Reagan, My Father, Brian Joseph Davis (ECW)
• This Ramshackle Tabernacle, Samuel Thomas Martin (Breakwater Books)
• All Those Drawn to Me, Christian Peterson (Caitlin)
• World News Story, Michael Woods (Book Thug)
• Three Deaths, Josip Novakovich (Snare)
• I Still Don’t Even Know You, Michelle Berry (Turnstone)
• Recipes From the Red Planet, Meredith Quartermain (BookThug)
• Punishing Ugly Children, Darryl Joel Berger (Killick)
• Mystery Stories, David Helwig (Porcupine’s Quill)
• The Mountie at Niagara Falls, Salvatore Difalco (Anvil)
• I’m a Registered Nurse Not a Whore, Anne Perdue (Insomniac)
• The Devil You Know, Jenn Farrell (Anvil)
• Mennonites Don’t Dance, Darcie Friesen Hossack (Thistledown)
• Sex in Russia, Kenneth Radu (DC)
• The Young in their Country, Richard Cumyn (Enfield & Wizenty)
• High Speed Crow, Sheila McClarty (Oberon)
• Bird Eat Bird, Katrina Best (Insomniac)
• The Doctrine of Affections, Paul Headrick (Freehand)
• The Meaning of Children, Beverly Akerman (Exile)
• Faded Love, Robert N. Friedland (Libros Libertad)
• Bats or Swallows, Teri Vlassopoulos (Invisible)
• There is No Other, Jonathan Papernick (Exile)
• Missed Her, Ivan E. Coyote (Arsenal Pulp)
• Light Lifting, Alexander MacLeod (Biblioasis)
• Icebreaker/Auricle, Alisha Piercy (Conundrum)

Al Purdy’s education

On Tuesday, while reporting on the fate of Al Purdy’s cottage, Q&Q contacted the famous poet’s old school, Trenton High School in Trenton, Ontario. According to physics teacher Eric Lorenzen, who recently dug out microfilm with the famous Canadian poet’s Grade 11 transcripts, Purdy had an average of 42.3 per cent and a grade of 54 per cent in English grammar. He dropped out in 1936, the document lists “disinterested” as his reason for leaving.

For the record, here are some other notable authors who left school in the past, according to Education Reform: H.G. Wells, Leon Uris, Jack London, Rod McKuen, Carl Sandburg, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare (supposedly), George Bernard Shaw and William Faulkner.

Daily book biz round-up: Houellebecq steals from Wikipedia; the evils of present tense novels; and more

Today’s book news:

• Did Michel Houellebecq steal from Wikipedia? And if so, should he feel bad about it? Discuss
• Philips Pullman and Hencher bemoan inclusion of present tense novels on the Booker shortlist
• Booker judge Andrew Motion on this year’s selection process
• Coming soon: colour e-Ink
• Michael Geist suggests that universities dump Access Copyright

Daily book biz round-up: Doctorow slams iPad; Tintin in trouble again

Today’s book news:

• Lady Seinfeld innocent of vegetable plagiarism
• Tintin in trouble in the Congo again. Quick Snowy, run get help!
• N+1 gets a schmancy new website
• China Miéville now three times as nerdy
• 99-year-old woman becomes iPad-obsessed zombie, to the delight of next of kin
• Cory Doctorow slams iPad DRM! As does … Wil Wheaton!

Daniel O’Thunder to kick off National Post’s online book club

Earlier today, the folks at the National Post‘s books blog unveiled the inaugural selection for their newly launched virtual book club, known as The Afterword Reading Society. The chosen work is first-time B.C. novelist Ian Weir’s Daniel O’Thunder (Douglas & McIntyre), an off-kilter historical novel set in Victorian London about an evangelical boxer who challenges the devil to a round of bare-knuckle boxing (see Q&Q‘s review of Daniel O’Thunder).

Beginning on Feb. 2, a panel comprising Post staffers, as well as novelist Craig Davidson (author of the boxing novel The Fighter) and books blogger Erin Balser, will host weekly online discussions and live chats with the author. These virtual discussions will culminate on March 9 with a Q&A session with Weir at Ben McNally books in Toronto.

Bookmarks: New app from LibraryThing, voice acting by Stephen King, and more

A few bookish links from across the Web:

• Book-loving travellers, breathe a sigh of relief: Transport Canada explains that the whole “airplane book ban” was just a misunderstanding
• Hundreds of readers offer words of support after Marian Keyes reveals on her blog that “crippling depression” is keeping her from writing
• Toronto-based Scott Pilgrim series is one step closer to the silver screen – watch out, evil ex-boyfriends!
• Need to find the nearest bookstore or book events? There’s an app for that!
• Stephen King lends his voice to a new rock album as a doom-predicting radio host broadcasting his final show
• Does Google dream of Electric Sheep? The family of Philip K. Dick threatens to sue Google over new Nexus One phone

Self-serving political memoirs: Dick Cheney edition

You knew this was coming, didn’t you?

From The New York Times:

With his sustained blitz of television appearances and speeches, former Vice President Dick Cheney has established himself as perhaps the leading Republican voice against President Obama.

Not a bad time, then, to be in the market for a multimillion-dollar book contract.

Mr. Cheney is actively shopping a memoir about his life in politics and service in four presidential administrations, a work that would add to what is already an unusually dense collection of post-Bush-presidency memoirs that will offer a collective rebuttal to the many harshly critical works released while the writers were in office and beyond.

The article says that Cheney is looking for more than $2 million for the book, but will likely get a lower amount, given that most of the American public rate him just behind scabies in terms of appeal. Let’s hope that one day he will have to put this advance toward lawyer’s fees.

Bonus punchline! One of the book’s big revelations: Satan is shorter than you’d think.

Another day, another literary award controversy

The winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, which is partially funded by the Booker foundation, has been announced. The majority of titles on the shortlist – Hunger, The Unfaithful Translator, The American Granddaughter, Time of White Horses, The Scents of Marie-Claire – read like standard lit-prize material.

Then there’s the winner, Egyptian author Youssef Ziedan’s Beelzebub, a work of historical fiction that “features a 5th century Egyptian monk in Alexandria and delves into the history of divisions among fathers of the church over the nature of Christ,” according to The L.A. Times. The title refers to the Devil, who “unlike in classical religious thought . . . is not cursed as the voice of evil but implicitly hailed as the voice of human reason, which pushes the protagonist throughout the novel to question the universe around him.” As The L.A. Times puts it:

[Ziedan's] critique goes beyond the role of religious institutions to the essence of monotheistic religions: “The substance is the same; it is based on the superiority of oneself over others under the pretext of possessing a god who owns the truth. This element of superiority is the same in all three religions, which gives rise to violence. As long as religions last, violence will persist.”

[...] The work sympathizes with sects that challenged the divine nature of Christ, and it quickly ignited fury within the Coptic Church, which has about 10 million followers in Egypt.

In the manner of all good journalism, this Quillblogger will refrain from commentary; however, he looks forward to the inevitable English translation and Da Vinci Code-like storm of protest.

William Shakespeare, handsome devil

There’s been a flurry of chatter this week, some of it embarrassingly silly, following the Shakespeare Birthday Trust’s unveiling of what they claim to be a newly discovered portrait of William Shakespeare, painted during his lifetime.

Given that our era’s obsession with image and personality is underfed when it comes to Shakespeare (who, alas, never got around to writing a tell-all memoir about his troubled marriage and stint in rehab), the painting would be notable no matter what it actually looked like. But apparently it’s especially notable because, as The New York Times puts it, it depicts the Bard as “a head-turner of a man,” far from the nebbishy image that’s been associated with him until now.

In middle age, this Shakespeare has a fresh-faced complexion, a closely trimmed auburn beard, a long straight nose and a full, almost bouffant hairstyle. He is dressed in elaborate white lace ruff and a gold-trimmed blue doublet of a kind worn only by the wealthy and successful men of his age.

Props to American critic Wyatt Mason for highlighting two of the most egregious idiocies that have been floated so far. The first is the very idea that thinking of Shakespeare as a rich, striking dude will now somehow enhance or transform our understanding of his work.

It gets better. Apparently, the Shakespeare Birthday Trust put forward with a straight face the assertion that, as the Times puts it, the painting gives new support to “generations of speculation as to whether the playwright, a married man with three children, was bisexual.”

Because, you know, sharp-dressed men and all that.

At the very least, watch for the inevitable critical monograph entitled “William Shakespeare, Elizabethan England’s Metrosexual.”

Mason also points to a New Republic slide show about alleged images of the Bard. And as debate about the painting’s authenticity rages on, here in Canada we wait for Stephanie Nolen to weigh in.