Friends, I did it!! I set out a goal to read all the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2022 finalists and I indeed read them all. The shortlist list came out in September 2022, with the winner announced in October. I saw this as an opportunity to read what a wider audience is reading as well as support a Canadian award. In this post, I am going to do a quick run through all the finalists and share why I enjoyed each of the books.
About Scotiabank Giller Prize
The Giller Prize, founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994, highlights the very best in Canadian fiction year after year. In 2005, the prize teamed up with Scotiabank who increased the winnings 4-fold. The Scotiabank Giller Prize now 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 award is named in honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller by her husband Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch, who passed away in August 2017.
The longlist for 2022 was selected by an esteemed panel of five judges: Canadian authors Casey Plett (Jury Chair), Kaie Kellough, Waubgeshig Rice, and American authors, Katie Kitamura and Scott Spencer, who read over 140 books.
The 2022 Finalists
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century | Short stories, SFF | Goodreads | My Review
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is an evocative collection of twelve scifi short stories. Their range is quite versatile, covering a wide array of scenarios. I love speculating on the titles of books and Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century takes a look at what advances in technology, loss and grief expose within us. What are the things we would strive for if we could live even when we have died? What would we experience if we could control time? There are stories in this collection that will stay with me forever.
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English | Literary Fiction | Goodreads | My Review
A dark romance written in three parts, this one has a lot to offer about the living experience in Egypt, the concept of being from a culture as well as the personal tragedies that life throws at us. Through the main characters, a man and woman, Noor, the author, paints the picture of modern Egyptian life. I read the side of a foreigner who can potentially blend into the crowd if she doesn’t say a word (she doesn’t speak the language) as well as a local who has lived there long enough to know the heartbreak of everyday life. The writing is descriptive and easy to follow.
Each part of the book has its distinct style. The first part is written in short sections, narrated by the protagonists alternatively. Each section has an overarching question. Deep thought-provoking questions like ‘How many questions can you ask before you expose who you are?’, ‘Is it arrogant to grieve the loss of what you never had?’ In the second part, the storytelling style changes with the change in relationship status. Part 3 is a classroom setting with an instructor and students. This part broadened my understanding of the narrative and I felt validated in how I had grasped it.
The Sleeping Car Porter | Historical Fiction | Goodreads | My Review
Set in 1929, The Sleeping Car Porter is the story of a train ride from one end of Canada to another. I have never interacted with a car porter on a train and while I initially thought of them like ‘coolies’ on Indian trains, these car porters did so much more. Baxter is a Black queer man who is committed to become a dentist. The amount of money Baxter needed for his degree and the rate at which he was earning it through his duties as porter was mind blowing.
This book gave me a glimpse into the struggles of existence and the freedom of a dream coming true. It educated me about a time in Canadian history that I had never looked into before. By the end of the book, I was invested in Baxter like I am in my friends. He is written with great care and depth. His life experiences are interwoven with great craftsmanship into the narrative. He may fear for his job but Baxter is also a caring individual and I loved the bonds he formed with some of the passengers.
Stray Dogs: Stories | Short stories, Contemporary Fiction | Goodreads | My Review
As a whole, the collection drew me in. The love for photography is a common thread among many characters in the stories, including both amateur photographers and academics. The theme of displacement, or being away from home or returning to one’s homeland, is also prevalent. As an immigrant, I particularly enjoy reading about this theme.
We Measure the Earth with our Bodies | Historical Fiction | Goodreads | My Review
A book that spans fifty years in the lives of a family from Tibet, We Measure the Earth with our Bodies was the most meaningful book to me amongst the finalists. I grew up so close to Tibet and yet I knew almost nothing about it. I have been to Dharamshala, the city that is home to the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, and Tibet’s government-in-exile. I was too young to ask myself then what led to this exile. I am glad that now that I am older and see books that can fill in the gaps in my understanding from the past, I pick them up.
We Measure the Earth in our Bodies immersed me in its culture, religion and love. In so many ways I felt understood. This book made me reflect on the loss of culture due to displacement. Things that are commonplace when we are home that we no longer talk about when we are far away. I have experienced this in myself. With the characters, I felt the pain of losing loved ones, the hardships of adjusting to a new country, the pressure of doing well and the peace of making the best of the circumstances. In the rituals for death and prayer, I found my own culture reflected. In Tenkyi I saw my aunt who recently passed away and I am overjoyed in some ways that I can see her in books.
Taking part in a self-paced self-made up challenge
Getting started: Once I had my list of books to read, I just had to get the books. All the titles were available at my library, The Sleeping Car Porter in particular had weeks of waiting time. I started reading the books in November 2022 as my first library hold came through for Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu.
Keeping up: Since I was getting books from the library, my reading was paced by the availability of the holds. As they arrived, I read them. I liked this way of coming back to the challenge and incorporating it between all the other books I wanted to read. I had four of the books read by mid-January and it was the last book that took me the longest, making it March by the time I finished reading that one.
Prize: Any reason to grow my library is a reason to buy books. I was supposed to finish reading all the finalists before I treated myself by buying one of them. But that is not how it went. I got myself a copy of We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies in January when I started to struggle with it as I desperately need to annotate and highlight.
Thoughts of the one-woman Armed with A Book Jury
So many awards that I hear of – Hugo, Nebula – are limited to one genre. What makes the Scotiabank Giller Prize unique is its acceptance of all genres. There is science fiction, historical and contemporary fiction as well as long and short form writing. I was exposed to the variety in Canadian literature in a way I never had been before.
I think a short story collection, no matter how good it is, cannot win when there are full length books also in the running. Similarly, historical fiction, in my opinion, will always win over other genres because, when done right, it has a lot more depth and it allows the reader to ponder the past and the present. Based on these criteria, The Sleeping Car Porter and We Measure the Earth with our Bodies were my top two picks. I cannot choose between them. While The Sleeping Car Porter gave me new knowledge about the country I call home, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies enhanced my childhood knowledge of Tibet and current knowledge of the world.
The finalists were all high quality writing, two of which I could see being discussed in comparative literature classes. The only book I knew of before I committed to reading all five books was We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies. I hadn’t heard of the other four books or authors. I will definitely be coming back to the Scotiabank Giller Prize again in the future. I am also on the lookout for other awards whose shortlists I can read.
- There are some interesting books in the shortlist for the inaugural Carol Sheilds Prize For Fiction 🙂
- There is also 2023 Emerging Writer Prize in Non-Fiction, Literary Fiction and Speculative Fiction to check out.
I mentioned books from both of these in the April Wrap Up.
Thanks for being a reader on Armed with A Book! I appreciate you following along in my reading adventures. 🙂
Do you create miny-reading challenges for yourself? Is there a 5-10 book goal that you are pursuing in your reading right now?
Great post, Kriti. I will look out for some of these titles.
I’m in a book club now so apart from the commitment to read 11 books chosen by book club members, I participate in the Warm Winter Read challenge run by our public libraries. We invite 8 Victorian authors each year to nominate 4 recommended reads, plus we showcase their latest book – so 40 books in all. I’ll try to read one from each list, especially where recommended by an author I admire.
Thanks for reading, Angela! I love the way you pick books. It’s great to be part of public libraries and support books of authors we admire. 🙂
I should get you on my indie recommends indie series sometime! You are someone I admire. <3
*Big smile*