Asylum

For readers of Don DeLillo, Man Booker winner Alan Hollinghurst's Line of Beauty, Claire Messud, and Jonathan Franzen. Literary readership. Alexis's long-awaited second novel follows his award-winning Childhood. Set in Ottawa during the Mulroney years, Asylum is Andre Alexis's sweeping, edged-in-satire, yet deeply serious tale of intertwined lives and fortunes, of politics and vain ambition, of the building of a magnificent prison, of human fallibility, of the search for refuge, of the impossibility of love, and of finding home. Whether he is taking us into the machinations of a government office or into the mysterious workings of the human heart, Alexis is always alert to the humour and the profound truth of any situation. His cast of characters is eccentric and unforgettable, all recognizable in one way or another as aspects of ourselves or people we know well. At the centre of the story, which covers almost a decade, is a visionary project to build an ideal prison, a perfect metaphor for the purest aspects of artistic ambition and for all that is great and flawed in the world. Andre Alexis is a true original, one of the most talented and astute writers writing in Canada today. This dazzling novel is filled with tragedy, dry wit, intellectual grist. It is playful, linguistically accomplished, and psychologically profound. Its yearnings constitute the highest level of human concerns and pursuits. Alexis has written The Great Canadian Novel, with a twist.

About the Author :
ANDR ALEXISis an author of novels, short stories, and plays. His 2015 novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the Giller Prize, Canada Reads, and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. His internationally acclaimed debut, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. He is also the author of Days by Moonlight, which won the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Giller Prize, The Hidden Keys, Pastoral, Asylum, and Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa. Alexis lives in Toronto.

Review :
Praise for Childhood “André Alexis is a genuine talent.” —Richard Bachmann, A Different Drummer Books “Alexis [has an] astute understanding of the madly shimmering, beautifully weaving patterns created by what we have agreed to call memory.” —Ottawa Citizen “Although Canada boasts many promising young writers, the most promising of all may be André Alexis.” —London Free Press “Alexis already knows what it takes many grey wise men a lifetime to realize: that neither memory nor history is a straight line.” —Edmonton Journal