Canada Reads 2018 contenders
Saturday, Feb 03, 2018 at 2:16pm
The five finalists for this year's Canada Reads challenge have been decided.
Canada Reads, an annual competition run and broadcast by the CBC, pits books against each other to determine which book is the one all Canadians should read. Each of the contending books is championed by a media personality, who defends its merits through the rounds while panellists vote out titles one by one until the last remains.
The 2018 contenders and their champions are:
- The Boat People by Sharon Bala, defended by singer Mozhdah Jamalzadah
- American War by Omar El Akkad, defended by actor Tahmoh Penikett
- Precious Cargo by Craig Davidson, defended by severe weather expert Greg Johnson
- Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto, defended by stylist and editor Jeanne Beker
- The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, defended by singer Jully Black
The debates take place March 26 - 29, 2018. You can listen to them live on CBC Radio One, or stream them online through CBC's website.
| Categories: Awards, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Literature, Canadian Lit |
See:
The Boat People
- Sharon Bala 
Trade paperback
$24.95
Reader Reward Price: $22.46
By the winner of The Journey Prize, and inspired by a real incident, The Boat People is a gripping and morally complex novel about a group of refugees who survive a perilous ocean voyage to reach Canada - only to face the threat of deportation and accusations of terrorism in their new land.
When the rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees reaches the shores of British Columbia, the young father is overcome with relief: he and his six-year-old son can finally put Sri Lanka's bloody civil war behind them and begin new lives. Instead, the group is thrown into prison, with government officials and news headlines speculating that hidden among the "boat people" are members of a terrorist militia. As suspicion swirls and interrogation mounts, Mahindan fears the desperate actions he took to survive and escape Sri Lanka now jeopardize his and his son's chances for asylum.
Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer Priya, who reluctantly represents the migrants; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan's fate, The Boat People is a high-stakes novel that offers a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis. Inspired by real events, with vivid scenes that move between the eerie beauty of northern Sri Lanka and combative refugee hearings in Vancouver, where life and death decisions are made, Sharon Bala's stunning debut is an unforgettable and necessary story for our times.
American War
- Omar El Akkad
Trade paperback
$23.00
Reader Reward Price: $20.70
A unique and eerily convincing masterwork, American War takes a scalpel to American politics, precisely dissecting it to see what would happen if their own policies were turned against them. The answer: inevitable, endless bloodshed.
In a disturbingly believable near future, the need for sustainable energy has torn the United States apart. The South wants to maintain the use of fossil fuels, even though the government in The North has outlawed them. Now, unmanned drones patrol the skies, and future martyrs walk the markets. For the first time in three hundred years, America is caught up in a civil war. Out of this turmoil comes Sarat Chestnut, a southern girl born into the ongoing conflict. At a displaced persons camp, a mysterious older man takes her under his wing, and while her family tries to survive, Sarat is made into a deadly instrument of war, with consequences for the entire nation.
Forgiveness
- Mark Sakamoto
Trade paperback
$19.99
Reader Reward Price: $17.99
WINNER of CBC Canada Reads
Finalist for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the OLA Evergreen Award
#1 National Bestseller
When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Like many young Canadian soldiers, Ralph was captured by the Japanese army. He would spend the war in prison camps, enduring pestilence, beatings and starvation, as well as a journey by hell ship to Japan to perform slave labour, while around him his friends and countrymen perished. Back in Canada, Mitsue and her family were expelled from their home by the government and forced to spend years eking out an existence in rural Alberta, working other people's land for a dollar a day.
By the end of the war, Ralph emerged broken but a survivor. Mitsue, worn down by years of back-breaking labour, had to start all over again in Medicine Hat, Alberta. A generation later, at a high school dance, Ralph's daughter and Mitsue's son fell in love.
Although the war toyed with Ralph's and Mitsue's lives and threatened to erase their humanity, these two brave individuals somehow surmounted enormous transgressions and learned to forgive. Without this forgiveness, their grandson Mark Sakamoto would never have come to be.
The Marrow Thieves
- Cherie Dimaline
Young adult softcover
$19.95
Reader Reward Price: $17.96
Winner of the 2017 Governor General's Literary Award (Young People's Literature - Text)
Winner of the 2017 Kirkus Prize
Winner of the 2018 Sunburst Award
Winner of the 2018 Amy Mathers Teen Book Award
Winner of the 2018 Burt Award for First Nations, Inuit and Métis Young Adult Literature
Just when you think you have nothing left to lose, they come for your dreams.
Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The Indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden - but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.
