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Book Review: Luka and the Fire of Life, by Salman Rushdie

Luka and the Fire of Life By Salman Rushdie Knopf Canada 218 pp.; $29.95 Reviewed by Randy Boyagoda Salman Rushdie’s new novel, Luka and the Fire of Life, invites comparisons with his earlier book,...

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Passwords: Canadian writers add to The Novelist’s Lexicon

Robyn Asquini for Weekend Post Asking a writer for a single word is like asking the clouds to produce a single drop of rain, or the lawn to grow a single blade of grass — an almost impossible request....

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Book Review: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by...

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer By Siddhartha Mukherjee Scribner 571 pp; $34.99 Reviewed by Randy Boyagoda “Humankind,” T.S. Eliot wrote, “cannot bear very much reality. Time past...

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Book Review: The Empty Family, by Colm Tóibín

The Empty Family By Colm Tóibín McClelland & Stewart 214 pp; $29.99 Reviewed by Randy Boyagoda Only the very finest writers can explore the same themes, settings and characters, book after book,...

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Book Review: All Things Shining, by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age By Hubert L. Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly Free Press 255 pp., $29.99 Reviewed by Randy Boyagoda This late in Western...

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Spring Picks: From David Foster Wallace to Zsuzsi Gartner

In this Saturday’s books section, we asked the authors of some of our most anticipated books of the season to tell us what books they’re most looking forward to reading this Spring. Illustrations by...

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The apprenticeship of Randy Boyagoda

Aaron Lynett/National PostNovelist and critic Randy Boyagoda poses for a portrait at the Lahore Tikka House. Beggar’s Feast is not the novel Randy Boyagoda was supposed to write. That novel, The King...

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Open Book: Beggar’s Feast, by Randy Boyagoda

Toronto-based Randy Boyagoda sets the beginning of his novel Beggar’s Feast in the early years of the 20th century. For the villagers of Sudugama, in the heart of British-occupied Ceylon, it might as...

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Book Review: The Secret Knowledge, by David Mamet

The Secret Knowledge By David Mamet Sentinel 230 pp; $32.50 Reviewed by Randy Boyagoda We love conversion stories because of their promise of inherent drama. Since the wanton days of St. Augustine, the...

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Book Review: The Accident, by Mihail Sebastian

The Accident By Mihail Sebastian Translated by Stephen Henighan Biblioasis 257 pp; $19.95 Reviewed by Randy Boyagoda All serious writers have at least two dreams. The primal dream is of immediate...

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Book Review: Why Read Moby-Dick, by Nathaniel Philbrick

Why Read Moby-Dick By Nathaniel Philbrick Viking 144 pp; $29 Reviewed by Randy Boyagoda Moby-Dick, as I like to tell my students, is nothing less than the Moby-Dick of novels. I usually get a laugh out...

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Book Review: The Ecstasy of Influence, by Jonathan Lethem

The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, etc. By Jonathan Lethem Doubleday 437 pp; $32 Reviewed by Randy Boyagoda Late last Friday night, as I was travelling back to my basement apartment from an Echo...

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Book Review: What We Talk About When We Talk About War, by Noah Richler

What We Talk About When We Talk About War By Noah Richler Goose Lane Editions 370 pp; $24.95 I met Noah Richler at a book event about six years ago, shortly after returning to Toronto from an extended...

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Book Review: This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Díaz

This is How You Lose Her By Junot Díaz Riverhead Books 224 pp., $28.50 The last time I was this nervous about reading a book around others, it was Portnoy’s Complaint, and I was in Milwaukee, staying...

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Book Review: The Natural History of Canadian Mammals, by Donna Naughton

The Natural History of Canadian Mammals By Donna Naughton Canadian Museum of Nature/University of Toronto Press 784 pp; $69.95 Had your fill of this year’s essential reading, whether it’s from the fall...

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What As I Lay Dying gains going from page to stage

I once walked out of a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of Hamlet in disgust. More accurately, I walked out in proud disgust, gratified that not even the hallowed RSC — despite countless hours of...

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Book Review: Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book, by Lawrence Hill

Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book By Lawrence Hill University of Alberta Press 33 pp; $10.95 Over the years, I’ve heard novelists joke now and then about their struggles with Rushdie envy. This is...

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Book Review: Odds Against Tomorrow, by Nathaniel Rich

Odds Against Tomorrow By Nathaniel Rich Farrar, Straus and Giroux 306 pp; $30 Nathaniel Rich’s new novel Odds Against Tomorrow is a publicist’s dream, a work of ambitious and serious-minded literary...

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Fire in the Unnnameable Country, by Ghalib Islam: Review

Fire in the Unnameable Country By Ghalib Islam Hamish Hamilton Canada 448 pp; $30 Hedayat, the narrator of Ghalib Islam’s ambitious debut novel Fire in the Unnameable Country, considers himself a...

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Philip Marchand: Preaching to the White house

Richard John Neuhaus A Life in the Public Square Randy Boyagoda Image 480 pgs; $35 No aroused citizenry, it seems, stood in the way of the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision legalizing assisted...

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