Sweeter Than All The World

Table of Contents:
Contents 1. Speaking Waskahikan 2. Sailing to Danzig 3. Flour and Yeast 4. On Lastfire Lake 5. Tongue Screw 6. Manhattan 7. Believing Is Seeing 8. Left-handed Woman 9. Table Setting 10. Crossing the Volga 11. Sleeping with Franz Kafka 12. The Holy Community of the Bride 13. Except God Who Already Knows 14. A Plan for Jews and Mennonites 15. The Shells of the Ocean 16. A Tour of Siberia 17. In the Ear of the Beholder 18. My Brother Vanya 19. Birch and Lilac 20. The Hills of Number Eight Romanovka 21. Bones of the Atacama Desert 22. Homestead 23. A Ladder of Angels Acknowledgments Selected Bibliography

About the Author :
RUDY WIEBE's novels, stories and essays stand at the forefront of Canadian literature. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction twice, for The Temptations of Big Bear and for A Discovery of Strangers. He is also the co-author of Stolen Life, which won the Viacom Canada Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize, the Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-Fiction and the Alberta Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. His memoir, Of This Earth, won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and was a national bestseller.

Review :
“A creative exploration of the interrelationships between personal identity, religious faith and historical particularity. . . . Wiebe is . . . successful in crafting a range of haunting and evocative images.” —Mennonite Brethren Herald “A beautiful, moving book. . . . The descriptions . . . are marvellous. . . . The book achieves a wonderful cinematic clarity." —The Globe and Mail “With the audacious confidence of a mature writer, [Wiebe] breathes life into a series of Mennonite characters, who tell their stories from beyond the grave, in the first person and in present tense.” —Maclean’s "A fascinating, complicated, highly relevant and powerful story." —Books in Canada “This is a profoundly serious book. It is a many-voiced testimonial, a discrete series of monologues, and it functions by accumulation, one horrific tale after another, augmenting into a chorus of witnesses. . . . Sweeter Than All the World is a construct of iron tongs and stone, a testimony to what Italo Calvino called . . . “the virtues of weight.”. . . This novel deserves respect. It is an important work; a fictional compilation of voices from Mennonite history, and a resonant portrait of a contemporary man inflicted with a chronic (and, it would seem, inherited) sense of brokenness.” —Ottawa Citizen “His great strength lies in meticulous research, passion for his subjects, and a powerful narrative sweep. . . . Fascinating.” —Quill & Quire “Intellectually and psychologically challenging. . . . A difficult exercise is ultimately rewarding." —Calgary Herald “A panoramic examination of Mennonite history through the story of one particular family.” —Saskatoon StarPhoenix “Wiebe is a writer who does his homework. . . . There is much of interest here, unusual and pertinent points of history, and they are vividly revisited. . . . The book rises to poetic heights as Wiebe’s unerring sense of place allows it to soar.” —London Free Press “There are breathtaking scenes infused with poignant beauty.” —Times-Colonist (Victoria) “Rudy Wiebe has written his epic. . . . Richly satisfying and worth reading and pondering again and again.” —Kitchener-Waterloo Record “Wiebe succeeds in making [history] dramatic, intriguing, romantic and tragic.” —Calgary Herald Praise for A Discovery of Strangers: “A work of extraordinary originality and beauty.” —The Globe and Mail “A pleasure of the first order—the pleasure of true art.” —Edmonton Journal Praise for Stolen Life: “So rich. . . . I couldn’t put it down.” –Ann-Marie MacDonald “The most powerful book I’ve ever read. . . . Insightful, poetic, gripping.” —Hamilton Spectator