Amazing news that André Alexis won the WRITERS TRUST FICTION PRIZE last night for DAYS BY MOONLIGHT! The prize is worth $50,000. A big congratulations to him and Coach House. We have stock at Raincoast now and more en route from Coach House
This is a wonderful read and one of my faves from my publishers for 2019. We also have stock of his other amazing book Fifteen Dogs which was a 2017 CBC CANADA READS SHORT-LIST.
WINNER OF THE 2015 GILLER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2015 ROGERS WRITERS’ TRUST FICTION PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE 2015 TORONTO BOOK AWARDS
Days By Moonlight
“With the dream-like touch of a magical realist, Alexis carries us away on a profound and hilarious drive through small-town Ontario as it’s never been seen before in search of a mysterious poet named Skennen. It’s a journey where the spiritual meets the commonplace and the bizarre, the underworld comes up for air when you least expect it, and the Divine patiently watches over all. Days by Moonlight is a funny, moving, and wholly original take on the quest narrative that liberates the imagination with a loud whoop of joy.” — 2019 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury (Dennis Bock, Michael Kaan, and Suzette Mayr)
Announcements have popped up here and I’ve pasted previous media below.
https://globalnews.ca/news/6132428/andre-alexis-writers-trust-fiction-prize/
Days by Moonlight by Alexis, Andre (02/19/19)
9781552453797 | Coach House Books | PGC
Paperback | Price: $19.95
Fifteen Dogs 9781552453056 $19.95
Previously mentioned
CBC The Next Chapter, Proust Questionnaire (May 10, 2019)
“A great novel doesn’t try to answer questions, but, like Days by Moonlight, complicates them.” And of the quincunx, “Each book can work on its own, but whether you read them in or out of order, don’t read just one, because their best effect is cumulative.” — Globe and Mail (Feb 23, 2019 print edition) review and Q&A
“. . . an incredible and rare CanLit road story.” — Toronto Star (Feb 21, 2019, print edition) interview
“Alexis handles the material with a skill and adroitness readers have come to expect from him, along with a subtextual complexity that belies the straightforwardness of the surface narrative…the days I spent reading the novels of the Quincunx were among the most pleasurable days of reading in my memory.” — Toronto Star (Feb 16, 2019 print edition) review
“[A] surreal adventure…satirize[s] a racial history that is stranger than fiction.” — Kirkus Reviews (March 1, 2019)
“. . . darkly funny exploration of mourning and Canadian identity, containing a touch of the surreal.” — Publishers Weekly, Review
“In Days by Moonlight (Coach House Books, Feb. 19), the fourth instalment in André Alexis’s “quincunx” of novels that includes the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning Fifteen Dogs, a botanist and a professor embark on a Dantesque journey through Southwestern Ontario.” — Globe and Mail, Winter 2019 Preview
“Days by Moonlight, Andre Alexis (Coach House, Feb. 19) Fifteen Dogs, the Giller prize winner and bestseller, was the second in this “quincunx” series of books by Alexis that explores different book structures (pastoral, apologue and mystery. This penultimate one’s a road trip and promises to be just as entertaining and enlightening as the other three he’s so far completed.” — The Toronto Star, 20 Books I Can’t Wait to Read by Deborah Dundas
“Nearly a year after his parents’ death, botanist Alfred Homer agrees to go on a research road trip with Professor Morgan Bruno, an old family friend. As the sun sets, the two depart in search of an obscure, possibly dead poet named John Skennen and encounter a host of oddities in the gothic underworld of southern Ontario. Days by Moonlight is the fourth book in André Alexis‘s acclaimed quincunx, which includes the Scotiabank Giller Prize and Canada Reads winner Fifteen Dogs.” — CBC 28 Works of Fiction to Watch for Spring
“In a mash-up that is part fabulism, part faux biography, and part satire, Days by Moonlight conveys the experience of grief, managing to transform its inarticulable and symbolic weight into a finely wrought literary work.” — Quill and Quire Review: