The Night Piece
Collected Short Fiction
- Publisher
- McClelland & Stewart
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2020
- Category
- Literary, Short Stories (single author), City Life
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780771006630
- Publish Date
- Oct 2020
- List Price
- $34.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
A career-spanning collection of stories from the author of Fifteen Dogs, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and Canada Reads.
Vivid, profound, moving, and with moments of sly humour, the stories in The Night Piece reveal worlds both familiar and deeply strange. Drawing from Alexis's acclaimed debut collection, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, and the highly original Beauty and Sadness, and including previously uncollected stories, here is the surreal and brilliant short fiction of André Alexis--one of Canada's most extraordinary writers.
With an Afterword by Madeleine Thien
About the author
Contributor Notes
André Alexis is the author of novels, short stories, and plays. His 2015 novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada Reads, and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. His internationally acclaimed debut, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. He is also the author of Days by Moonlight, which won the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Hidden Keys, Pastoral, Asylum, and Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa. Alexis lives in Toronto.
Excerpt: The Night Piece: Collected Short Fiction (by (author) Andre Alexis)
Days before travelling, she dreamed of pine trees and mountains. In her dreams, the trees and mountains were a barrier behind which there was nothing. Not the usual nothing, but an unnameable blank. In one dream, for instance, she put out a hand to touch a spruce only to discover that the tree was made of glass, that all the trees were fragile and broke into darkness if touched. In another, a man in a white coat smiled at her, pointed to the trees and mountains and then, without asking, took her hand in his, brought it to his lips.
Editorial Reviews
A CBC Best Canadian Fiction Book of the Year
“[An] element of mystery—of something plainly and unabashedly inexplicable—resides at the heart of Alexis’s short fiction, collected here in a single volume that spans the author’s entire career. . . . As consistently entertaining as it is philosophically invigorating.”
—Quill & Quire
“Alexis’ sometimes tragic, never happy, usually fun, always funny, mostly unnerving stories are what happens to magic realism when it moves to Toronto after spending a couple of decades in Ottawa. . . . There is nothing that is not enjoyable in these stories, the fun versions of all the dark weirdness Canadian writers and film-makers were briefly famous for in the ‘90s, and Andre Alexis deserves all the Gillers and at least one Booker.”
—Toronto Star
