Since being published in 1981, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan has remained the definitive novel about the post-Pearl Harbor internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Even in the U.S.—where treatment of internees was, ironically, less harsh than it was here—there is no real literary equivalent, although the success of David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars (which was also made into a film), did cast a bright, if indirect light on this dark chapter of our mutual histories when it came out in 1995. Read more…
international success
LOOK FOR ME
by Edeet Ravel
This is the sophomore installment in Edeet Ravel’s Tel Aviv trilogy, themed around life in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Her brilliant first novel in the series, Ten Thousand Lovers, published in 2003, met with terrific international success and garnered Ravel a Governor General’s Award nomination. It was also named one of Q&Q’s top five Canadian fiction titles of the year. Read more…