It’s now the stuff of legend that until Clara Callan bagged him both the Giller and Governor General’s Award in 2001, Richard Wright had been thanklessly producing magnificent but unheralded novels for decades. Wright’s fans, now legion, know his confounding ability to write across a wide variety of genres, genders, and eras, and to do so convincingly, yet Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard, arguably Wright’s farthest flung experiment yet, may be the final proof that he is indeed CanLit’s answer to Meryl Streep. Read more…