Rat Jelly & Other Poems 1963-78 Michael Ondaatje Marion Boyars, U.K. 1980 Rat Jelly was a book of poetry originally published by Coach House Press in Toronto in 1973. In 1979, McClelland and Stewart out of Toronto and WW Norton out of New York published There’s a Trick with a Knife I’m Learning to Do: [...]
The Tin Flute Gabrielle Roy Reynal and Hitchcock, New York, 1947 Originally written in French and titled Bonheur D’occasion, this 1945 novel is set in Montreal and is seen as having laid the foundation for Quebec’s Quiet Revolution of the 1960′s. The Quiet Revolution was a period of rapid secularization and political change in Quebec. [...]
Divisadero Michael Ondaatje McClelland and Stewart, Canada, 2007 Ondaatje’s newest novel is another brilliant work of art. Divisadero won the Governor General’s Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Booklist gave it a starred review. Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri calls it Ondaatje’s finest work to date and goes on to say, [...]
Anil’s Ghost Michael Ondaatje Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000 This is a signed first U.S. edition of Anil’s Ghost in fine/fine condition. The true first edition is the Canadian McClelland and Stewart first printing. In this novel, Anil Tissera, studying forensic anthropology in the States, returns to Sri Lanka to work for the U.N. [...]
The Stone Diaries Carol Shields Random House, Canada, 1993 This is Carol Shields masterpiece. It is the first novel ever to win both the Canadian Governor General’s Award and the American Pulitzer Prize. Being an American-born naturalized Canadian, she is the first and only author to have been eligible for both. The Stone Diaries also [...]
A Complicated Kindness Miriam Toews Knopf, Canada, 2004 This is the true first edition of Miriam Toews masterpiece, A Complicated Kindness. It was nominated for the 2004 Giller Prize and won the 2004 Governor General’s Award for fiction. It also won the 2006 CBC Canada Reads competition. It spent over a year on the Canadian [...]
The English Patient Michael Ondaatje McClelland and Stewart, Canada, 1992 The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje’s most famous novel, won the 1992 Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Canada Australia Award, and the 1992 Booker Prize. The 1996 film, on which Ondaatje worked closely, won nine Academy Awards, including best picture. This novel can be considered a [...]
The Handmaids Tale Margaret Atwood Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1986 The true first edition of this dystopian speculative fiction classic is the Canadian McClelland and Stewart first printing which came out one year before this U.S. first edition. This signed Houghton Mifflin publication is in fine/near fine condition. The book is in perfect, unread condition. [...]
The Diviners Margaret Laurence McClelland and Stewart, Canada, 1974 This last novel by Margaret Laurence won the 1974 Canadian Governor General’s Award for fiction. It is a true Canadian classic. I just picked it up at my local library books-for-sale cart for fifty cents, in the hope that it would turn out to be much [...]