Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road tripby his parents' friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries tounearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary roadtrip. Alfred and the Professor encounter towns where Black residents speak only insign language and towns that hold Indigenous Parades: it is a land of house burnings,werewolves, and witches.
Complete with Alfred's drawings of plants both real and implausible, Days byMoonlight is a Dantesque journey taken during the 'hour of the wolf,' that time of daywhen the sun is setting and the traveller can't tell the difference between dog andwolf. And it asks that perpetual question: how do we know the things we know arereal, and what is real anyway?
About the Author :
André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. He is the author of the Quincunx, comprised of five novels: Fifteen Dogs, winner of the Giller Prize, CBC Canada Reads, and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; Days by Moonlight, winner of the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; Pastoral; The Hidden Keys; and Ring. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Asylum, The Night Piece, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, and most recently Other Worlds, longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. He is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Prize. He lives in Toronto.
Andre Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. His novel Fifteen Dogs won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include The Hidden Keys, Pastoral (nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize), Asylum, Beauty and Sadness, Ingrid & the Wolf, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa and Lambton, Kent and Other Vistas: A Play.
Review :
"What’s so enjoyable about Days by Moonlight is that it turns the act of reading into traveling, and traveling into a constant swaying between wonder and bewilderment where travelers and readers alike are held in balance mainly by the illusion that what they experience is the world and who they are is being part of it." – Franziska Lamprecht, Full Stop
“This imaginative travelogue will amuse readers even as it raises weightier issues.” – Publishers Weekly
“André Alexis’s fiction pulls off the nearly-impossible: it hearkens back to seemingly archaic modes of storytelling, then brings them seamlessly into the modern day, serving as a reminder of why these forms has power in the first place.” – Tobias Carroll, LitHub, “19 Books You Should Read This April: Recommended Reading from Lit Hub Staff and Contributors”
"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
