Wide World in Celebration and Sorrow Acts of Kamikaze Fiction

Subversive, edgy, and wildly entertaining, this short story collection is a unique encounter with fiction in Leon Rooke's characteristic style as he peels back the skin of social convention and embraces the chaos of life with characters and themes as unpredictable as an assassin who murders the words in your memory; Egi Balducchi who is either a recording angel or a mad old man with a wheelbarrow; Eli's daughter, Frannie, who may just be a gentle two-bit hooker, or the Virgin herself; and is that really God, shrugging off insults from Isaac Babel and Guy de Maupassant? Then there is Lap the Dog who escapes gunshot and poison, and heads cross-country to find the human survivors; a glimpse into the life of Joyce Carol Oates; the philosopher Heidegger in a fight with Hannah Arendt; the Indian Chief who is denied his professorship at Yale when he turns up for the ceremony with a black princess on his arm; and more... Wide World in Celebration and Sorrow is an evocative short story collection that is wild with laughter, confronting pathos, rage and humour in ways that only Rooke's writing could approach.

Leon Rooke is the author of The Beautiful Wife, The Fall of Gravity: A Novel, The Fat Woman, and Shakespeare’s Dog. His work has been featured in the Antioch Review, Daedalus, and the Republic of Letters. He is the recipient of the Canada-Australia Literary Prize, the Governor General’s Award for English Language Fiction, the Periodical Association of Canada Award for English-Language Paperback Novel of the Year, a Pushcart Prize, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. He lives in Toronto.