From Istanbul to New Delhi to Boulder, Colorado, through Venice, Paris, Rome, and points between. As travellers, we are always walking backwards, forever on the verge of stepping into the unknown, never knowing what waits around the next corner. You could be lost, forget your passport, fall ill. You could be served a bowl of food and not know whether it’s animal, vegetable, or mineral. Even flushing the toilet can be an adventure. You are a child again, innocent and hoping for the best, forced...
Of one of Mark Frutkin's previous books of verse, Poetry Canada Review said it provided «a supernatural fusion of the earthbound with the heavenly to forge the lightning of poetry.» Divided into two sections, one inspired by ancient Chinese art, the other limning the ambiguities and incongruities of the contemporary human condition, Frutkin's new volume of poetry, Iron Mountain, often presents human beings wandering in the wilderness between two abysses while still appreciating the...
This magical new novel by Governor General and Trillium Prize nominee Mark Frutkin, set in 13th century Venice and Cathay, is a dazzling fresco of shimmering language, brimming with golden tableaus of arid deserts and cobblestone alleys, the wafting scent of cardomin and the mystical trill of a praying friar. It is the story of Marco Polo as he is about to set sail on an arduous and lengthy pilgrimage with his father, uncle and faithful guide across the sun-soaked silk route, the rich path of...
Short-listed for the 1988 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, Ottawa-Carleton Book Award and Trillium Book Award Paris, the City of Light, was once the scene of a brilliant magnesium flare, host to the belle epoque from 1900 to 1914. Tempting poets, painters, writers, and composers from across Europe, the city relied on one man to move among them all-Guillaume Apollinaire. His contemporaries called him brilliant, mad, whimsical. He was the bastard son of an Italian cavalry...
In geology an erratic is a «boulder or rock formation transported some distance from its original source, as by a glacier.» In award-winning novelist Mark Frutkin’s case, his movement from his native Cleveland. Ohio, was instigated by his wish to protest and resist the U.S. military draft during the Vietnam War, and his destination was Canada. An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 American Vietnam War draft resisters sought sanctuary in Canada. Many of these men stayed, became Canadian citizens, and...
