Set in both the Caribbean and Canada, The Worlds Within Her joins politics and love as Yasmin recollects her life in the 40s and 50s. Alternating between Yasmin and her mother Shakti, their worlds and dreams collide to release deeply buried secrets.

Neil Bissoondath is the author of two short story collections, Digging Up the Mountains and On The Eve Of Uncertain Tomorrows, and five novels, A Casual Brutality, The Innocence of Age, Doing the Heart Good, The Unyielding Clamour of Night, and The Soul of All Great Designs. His fiction has been nominated for many prizes, including The Guardian Fiction Prize, the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Governor General’s Literary Award. He has twice won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and once won the Canadian Authors Association Prize for Fiction. His non-fiction book, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (1994) won the Gordon Montador Award.

Originally from Trinidad, Neil now lives in Quebec City with his wife and daughter. He is a professor in the Département des literatures at Université Laval.  

Neil Bissoondath's profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction

“A multilayered journey from darkness to light…rich in character as well as emotion.”

The Hamilton Spectator

“Heart-wrenching … with a searing intensity and a powerful sensitivity that sweeps aside the politics of identity and lays bare the painful and beautiful human condition.”

Vancouver Sun

“Powerful and stylistically rich … His best book yet … Yasmin, in her attempts to blend the very different worlds within her into a satisfying sense of self, is as good a symbol of this country as we could ask for.”

Montreal Gazette