A young man down on his luck meets the woman of his dreams in an adult education course. But this is no ordinary male fantasy: the man is a Pakistani-Canadian artist with a treatable recurrent cancer; the young lady is an Indigenous princess just returned from art school in Europe to her father’s glass summer palace in Muskoka. This romantic comedy, set in mid-Toronto and on Lake Rosseau, plays with the intersection of Indigenous, settler, and immigrant success stories against the background of mortality and the stars.

Julian Samuel, author of Passage to Lahore, is a filmmaker, writer, and artist who was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1952, and has lived in the UK, Toronto, and Peterborough. His films include Black Skin; White Masks, Dictators, Resisting the Pharaohs, Red Star over the Western Press, and he is the co-author of The Raft of the Medusa: five voices on colonies, nations, and histories and author of Lone Ranger in Pakistan, a book of poetry. His articles and essays have appeared in Arab World Review, Canadian Literature, and FUSE, among others. He makes his home in Montreal, where he completed an MFA and has taught at Concordia University.

Julian Samuel's profile page

Muskoka, Julian Samuel’s short new novel, takes in the deadly serious matters of colonization, displacement, ramped-up privilege and performative justice in Canada––but in the refreshing shape of a left-field rom-com that bristles with edgy humour. Centred around the lovestruck and quizzical Mohammed, the result is a prickly yet touching read that’s stuffed with laughs and provocations. Highly recommended.

Hein Marais, author of <I>The Job Crisis in South Africa and Beyond: The Case for a Universal Basic Income</I>