Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Canadian authors Mary Lawson and Rachel Cusk are among 13 authors in the running for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction.
The two homegrown novelists were named on the long list Tuesday for the 50,000-pound (C$87,000) prize.
Lawson, who grew up in an Ontario farming community, earned her second Booker nod for her tale of life in a northern town, “A Town Called Solace.”
She last made the long list for 2006's “The Other Side of the Bridge.”
Saskatoon-born, London-based Cusk is a contender for her cottage-set psychodrama, “A Second Place.”
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers' careers, and was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers. Eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all novels in English published in the United Kingdom.
Also in the running is Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, with 'Klara and the Sun,“ a novel about love and humanity narrated by a solar-powered android.
It is the fourth Booker nomination for Ishiguro, who won the prize in 1989 for “The Remains of the Day.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Richard Powers is nominated for “Bewilderment,” about an astrobiologist and his neurodivergent son. Powers won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2019 for eco-epic “The Overstory,” which was also a Booker Prize finalist.
Other previous Booker contenders on this year's list include South Africa's Damon Galgut for his story of racism and reckoning, “The Promise”; British writer Sunjeev Sahota for “China Room,” which travels between England and India.
Two American first novels are among this year's contenders: Patricia Lockwood's social media-saturated story “No One is Talking About This” and Nathan Harris' bestseller “The Sweetness of Water,” set in the U.S. South at the end of the Civil War.
The list also includes “Great Circle” by American writer Maggie Shipstead, British novelist Francis Spufford's “Light Perpetual,” British/Somali author Nadifa Mohamed's “The Fortune Men,” South African novelist Karen Jennings's “An Island” and “A Passage North” by Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam.
Historian Maya Jasanoff, who is chairing this year's judging panel, said many of the novels “consider how people grapple with the past - whether personal experiences of grief or dislocation or the historical legacies of enslavement, apartheid, and civil war.”
“Many examine intimate relationships placed under stress, and through them meditate on ideas of freedom and obligation, or on what makes us human,” she said. “It's particularly resonant during the pandemic to note that all of these books have important things to say about the nature of community, from the tiny and secluded to the unmeasurable expanse of cyberspace.”
A six-book shortlist will be announced Sept. 14, and the winner will be crowned Nov. 3 during a ceremony in London.
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
A photographer who worked for Megan Thee Stallion said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that he was forced to watch her have sex, was unfairly fired soon after and was abused as her employee.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would force TikTok's China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that's expected to face legal challenges.
People living near a wildfire burning about 15 kilometres southwest of Peace River are being told to evacuate their homes.
The U.S. Senate has passed US$95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.