Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa

Authors: Alexis, Andre
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
BISAC/Subject: FIC019000, FIC090020, FIC029000
ISBN: 9780771008030, Related ISBNs: 0771006667, 0771008031, 0889104786, 9780771006661, 9780771008030
Classification: Fiction
Number of pages: 232,
Audience: General/trade
Synopsis: These eight stories reveal a world that’s both recognizable and strange: cities of anxiety and violence, where quiet inhabitants lead outwardly banal lives that conceal sinister interiors. The premises, both fantastic and surreal, are also eerily plausible; they often follow the logic of dreams where the real can appear in disguise. Though geographically rooted, the setting – from Ottawa to Toronto and the South of France – take on an ephemeral dimension: the geography is of the subconscious.

With his darkly philosophical bent and sly humour, Alexis has fashioned an underworld and limned it with light. Despair quakes with life and sings with the imaginative brilliance of one of the most accomplished new talents writing today.
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