The Giller Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English. The Giller Prize is named in honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller and was founded in 1994 by her husband, Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch.
2008
Joseph Boyden for his novel Through Black Spruce,
published by Viking Canada
From internationally acclaimed author Joseph Boyden comes an astonishingly powerful novel of contemporary aboriginal life, full of the dangers and harsh beauty of both forest and city. When beautiful Suzanne Bird disappears, her sister Annie, a loner and hunter, is compelled to search for her, leaving behind their uncle Will, a man haunted by loss.While Annie travels from Toronto to New York, from modelling studios to A-list parties, Will encounters dire troubles at home. Both eventually come to painful discoveries about the inescapable ties of family. Through Black Spruce is an utterly unforgettable consideration of how we discover who we really are.
2007
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
The eagerly anticipated novel from the bestselling author of A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs.
Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined (read more)
2006
Publisher Comments
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures welcomes readers into a world where the most mundane events can quickly become life or death. By following four young medical students and physicians, this debut collection is a riveting, eye-opening account of what it means to be a doctor. (read more)
2005
Review
"A beautifully composed, unflinching and harrowing story. Perhaps the best fiction yet to confront and comprehend the legacy of Vietnam." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) (read more)
2004
Review
"Someone writing at this level well into her seventies...is a literary inspiration herself.... Maybe even more stories are lying in wait. Such first-rate abundance is an astonishment in any lifetime, let alone that of a middle-class mother, and is — to rework Faulkner's quip regarding Keats — worth any number of young daughters." Lorrie Moore (read more)
2003
Publisher Comments
M. G. Vassanji, author of The Book of Secrets, winner of the first Giller prize, brings us a novel that is rich in sensuous detail and political insight, and brilliantly captures the tyranny of history and memory, and questions one's role... (read more)
2002
Publisher Comments
Chapter One "My name is mary. People in this Village call me Mary-Mathilda. Or, Tilda, for short. To my mother I was Mary-girl. My names I am christen with are Mary Gertrude Mathilda, but I don't use Gertrude, because my maid has the same name... (read more)
2001
Publisher Comments
In a small town in Canada, Clara Callan reluctantly takes leave of her sister, Nora, who is bound for New York. It's a time when the growing threat of fascism in Europe is a constant worry, and people escape from reality through radio and the... (read more)
2000
Powells.com Staff Pick
Anil’s Ghost is a violent, chaotic war story, a page-turning, word-churning flash of a novel. Anil, a forensic anthropologist, "grows up in Sri Lanka," as the author summarized, "goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate... (read more)
1999
Publisher Comments
A Good House begins in 1949 in Stonebrook, Ontario, home to the Chamers family. The postwar boom and hope for the future color every facet of life: The possibilities seem limitless for Bill, his wife, Sylvia, and their three children. In the... (read more)
1998
Publisher Comments
In eight new stories, a master of the form extends and magnifies her great themes — the vagaries of love, the passion that leads down unexpected paths, the chaos hovering just under the surface of things, and the strange, often comical desires... (read more)
1997
Publisher Comments
When a sixty-seven-year-old Canadian rascal named Bernard Panofsky decides to write "the true story of my wasted life." the result is Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler's wickedly funny blend of satire, social commentary, and brilliant introspection... (read more)
1996
Publisher Comments
Margaret Atwood's books have sold over three million copies in the United States alone. She has long been one of the world's most respected novelist as well as one of its most popular. Alias Grace, her latest novel and a finalist for England... (read more)
1995
Powells.com Staff Pick
For a while it seemed that novels set in India were all the rage. My favorite is A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. His massive tome ranges across the vast chasms of that giant subcontinent, all from the cramped apartment of Dina... (read more)
1994
Publisher Comments
In 1988, a retired schoolteacher named Pius Fernandes receives an old diary found in the back room of an East African shop. Written in 1913 by a British colonial administrator, the diary captivates Fernandes, who begins to research the coded history... (read more)
