Shani Mootoo Longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize for her novel POLAR VORTEX! With this nomination, now four of Shani Mootoo’s five novels have received nominations for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize!
The 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist has been announced, and we would like to extend massive congratulations to Shani Mootoo, who has been recognized for her extraordinary new novel Polar Vortex, published by Book*hug Press.
Some secrets never die…
Priya and Alexandra have moved from the city to a picturesque Countryside town. What Alex doesn’t know is that, in moving, Priya is running from her past—from a fraught relationship with an old friend, Prakash, who pursued her for many years, both online and off. Time has passed, however, and Priya, confident that her ties to Prakash have been successfully severed, decides it’s once more safe to establish an online presence. In no time, Prakash finds Priya and contacts her. Impulsively, inexplicably, Priya invites him to visit her and Alex in the country, without ever having come clean with Alex about their relationship—or its tumultuous end. Prakash’s reentry into Priya’s life reveals cracks in her and Alex’s relationship and brings into question Priya’s true intentions.
Are we ever free from our pasts? Can we ever truly know the people we are closest to? Seductive and tension-filled, Polar Vortex is a story of secrets, deceptions, and revenge.
Shani Mootoo is a novelist, poet, and visual artist. Her novels include Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award; Valmiki’s Daughter, long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; He Drown She in the Sea, long-listed for the Dublin Impac Award; and Cereus Blooms at Night, short-listed for several prizes including the Giller Prize, and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. She is also a recipient of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and the Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Shani is represented by Samantha Haywood.
Praise for Polar Vortex:
“How to know the shifting pieces of ourselves, how to acknowledge contradictory desires, as we are pulled into the maelstrom of desire and memory? Shani Mootoo’s intimate new novel suspends us in the vortex between acts of betrayal and acts of love. It is a powerfully unsettling work from a brilliant artist.”
—Madeleine Thien, Scotiabank Giller Prize winning author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
“The past isn’t even past—and the present is tense with conflicting desires and untold stories. What brings clarity to this setting is Shani Mootoo’s limpid prose, clean and bracing. Polar Vortex is an honest, but also moving, exploration of true intimacy.”
—Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana
“What a gorgeous and thrilling novel. Beautifully crafted, with perfect form and icy-clear tone—Shani Mootoo held me under her spell until the shock and release of the last page!”
—Sarah Selecky, author of Radiant Shimmering Light
“Shani Mootoo’s Polar Vortex is a powerful, fraught, and inventive exploration of the impossibility of ever really knowing the people we come to love. Told in urgent, incandescent prose and effortlessly spinning in and out of time, the book is an intimate and starkly honest examination of the complexities of sexual identity, lust, shame, regret, and how we, no matter where we come from or how we identify, are at our most complicated when it comes to the whims and failings of the human heart.” —Joe Meno, author of Marvel and a Wonder
“A slow-burning examination of identity, gender, desire, and immigration…Mootoo’s subtle, thought-provoking tale stands out among stories of characters gripped by the past.”
–Publishers Weekly
“Compellingly charts the complexity of human relationships, the illusions of memory, and the corrosive power of denial.”
–Kirkus Reviews
The Giller Prize highlights the very best in Canadian fiction year after year and awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English, and $10,000 to each of the finalists. The longlist was selected by an esteemed panel of five judges: Canadian authors Mark Sakamoto (Jury Chair), Eden Robinson and David Chariandy, British-Canadian novelist, Tom Rachman and literary critic for The Guardian, Claire Armitstead.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist will be announced on Monday, October 5 at 10 a.m. ET on www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca/live, the Scotiabank Giller Prize Facebook page, YouTube and Twitter.
To view the full longlist, please visit: https://scotiabankgillerprize.ca/the-scotiabank-giller-prize-presents-its-2020-longlist/