Set in late 16th-century Africa, India, Portugal, and Japan, The African Samurai is a powerful historical novel based on the true story of Yasuke, Japan's first foreign-born samurai and the only samurai of African descent--for readers of Esi Edugyan and Lawrence Hill. In 1579, a Portuguese trade ship sails into port at Kuchinotsu, Japan, loaded with European wares and weapons. On board is Father Alessandro Valignano, an Italian priest and Jesuit missionary whose authority in central and east Asia is second only to the pope's. Beside him is his protector, a large and imposing East African man. Taken from his village as a boy, sold as a slave to Portuguese mercenaries, and forced to fight in wars in India, the young but experienced soldier is haunted by memories of his past. From Kuchinotsu, Father Valignano leads an expedition pushing inland toward the capital city of Kyoto. A riot brings his protector in front of the land's most powerful warlord, Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga is preparing a campaign to complete the unification of a nation that's been torn apart by over one hundred years of civil war. In exchange for permission to build a church, Valignano "gifts" his protector to Nobunaga, and the young East African man is reminded once again that he is less of a human and more of a thing to be traded and sold. After pledging his allegiance to the Japanese warlord, the two men from vastly different worlds develop a trust and respect for one another. The young soldier is granted the role of samurai, a title that has never been given to a foreigner; he is also given a new name: Yasuke. Not all are happy with Yasuke's ascension. There are whispers that he may soon be given his own fief, his own servants, his own samurai to command. But all of his dreams hinge on his ability to protect his new lord from threats both military and political, and from enemies both without and within. A magnificent reconstruction and moving study of a lost historical figure, The African Samurai is an enthralling narrative about the tensions between the East and the West and the making of modern Japan, from which rises the most unlikely hero.

The African Samurai: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Shreve, Craig

United States

Scribner Canada

In this novel about peace in a time of war, debut author Jamaluddin Aram masterfully breathes life into the colourful characters of the town of Wazirabad, in early 1990s Kabul, Afghanistan.\nIt is the early 1990s, in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Russian occupation has ended, and civil war has broken out, but life roars on in full force in the working-class town of Wazirabad.\nA rash of burglaries has stolen people’s sleep. Fifteen-year-old Aziz awakens from a dark dream that prompts him to plant shards of glass along the wall surrounding his house to protect his family against theft. Aziz’s sister, Seema, decorates kites with her calligraphy and sells fresh scorpions to spare her mother from servicing the local soldiers. Along the main street, three militiamen wait for the fighting to resume, while the Baker, the Watchmaker, the Tailor, and the Vegetable Seller make their modest living and the Bonesetter reads poetry to his cat. And every day at noon, a flaming red rooster walks three blocks to visit his favourite hens.\nBut tensions rise among the town’s people. The burglaries have put everyone on edge. The militiamen are on the hunt for the thief who stole their dog—and their ammunition. And a widow, who is the target of men’s lust and women’s scorn, soon finds herself on the periphery of a terrible violence. While the armed conflict rages on in the background, rumours swirl with a feverish frenzy, culminating in the collective chorus of the town’s living, breathing dreams.\nIn this brilliantly kaleidoscopic, darkly funny, and wholly captivating novel about peace in a time of war, Jamaluddin Aram breathes life into the families and friends, lovers and loners, neighbours and sworn enemies who wander the winding alleys of Wazirabad.

Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday

Aram, Jamaluddin

Literary

LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025 | Shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize\nFor fans of Emily St. John Mandel, David Mitchell, and Kazuo Ishiguro, an exquisite literary speculative novel set in an unnamed valley, where bereaved residents can petition to cross a forbidden border to see their lost loved ones again.\nSixteen-year-old Odile Ozanne is an awkward, quiet girl, vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decree who among the town’s residents may be escorted deep into the woods, who may cross the border’s barbed wire fence, who may make the arduous trek to descend into the next valley over. It’s the same valley, the same town. But to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The only border crossings permitted by the Conseil are mourning tours: furtive viewings of the dead in towns where the dead are still alive.\nWhen Odile recognizes two mourners she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her classmate Edme have crossed the border from the future to see their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme—who is brilliant and funny, and the only person to truly know Odile—is about to die. Sworn to secrecy by the Conseil so as not to disrupt the course of nature, Odile finds herself drawing closer to her doomed friend—imperiling her own future.\nMasterful and original, The Other Valley is an affecting modern fable about the inevitable march of time and whether or not fate can be defied. Above all, it is about love and letting go, and the bonds, in both life and death, that never break.

The Other Valley: A Novel

Howard, Scott Alexander

Black Cherokee: A Novel

Downing, Antonio Michael

A raw, beautiful memoir of a girl born missing an ear, a medical system insistent on saving her from herself, and our culture's desire to "fix" bodies. When Kate Gies was four years old, a plastic surgeon pressed a synthetic ear to the right side of her head and pulled out a mirror. He told her he could make her "whole"--could make her "right"--and she believed him. From the age of four to thirteen, she underwent fourteen surgeries, including skin and bone grafts, to craft the appearance of an outer ear. Many of the surgeries failed, leaving permanent damage to her body. In short, lyrical vignettes, Kate writes about how her "disfigured" body was scrutinized, pathologized, and even weaponized. She describes the physical and psychic trauma of medical intervention and its effects on her sense of self, first as a child needing to be fixed and, later, as a teenager and adult navigating the complex expectations and dangers of being a woman. It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished is the story of a girl desperately trying to have a body that makes her acceptable and of a woman learning to own a body she has never felt was hers to define. In an age of speaking out about the abuse of marginalized bodies, this memoir takes a hard look at the role of the medical system in body oppression and trauma.

It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body

Gies, Kate

Science & Math

The Katharina Code (The Cold Case Quartet)

Set between the icy streets and dark forests of Norway, a heart-stopping story of one man’s obsession with his coldest case, by “one of the most brilliantly understated crime novelists writing today” (The Sunday Times, London).\nKatharina went missing twenty-four years ago. Each year on the anniversary of her disappearance, Chief Inspector William Wisting rereads her files, searching for the answer he could never find; the code he could never solve. And he visits Katharina’s husband, Martin Haugen, the brokenhearted man he could never help.\nUntil now.\nThis year is different. Another woman is missing under similar circumstances. But so is Katharina’s husband. Wisting has to find him, but is he rescuing a dear old friend or playing a deadly game with a killer?\nA brilliantly understated crime novel that examines the long-term costs of lying to ourselves and each other through an atmospheric psychological game of cat-and-mouse.

Horst, Jørn Lier

You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times

Politics & Social Sciences

Teebi, Saeed

Social Sciences

Instant Bestseller\nA moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author ofEveryone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.\nSigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.\nBut Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.\nWhat unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.

We Could Be Rats: A Novel

AUSTIN, EMILY

Humor & Satire

“Essential.” —Margaret Atwood\nAn urgent call to action and a field guide to spotting the insidious patterns and mechanisms of the populist wave sweeping the globe from an award-winning journalist and acclaimed political thinker.\nHow to Lose a Country is a warning to the world that populism and nationalism don’t march fully-formed into government; they creep.\nAward-winning author and journalist Ece Temelkuran identifies the early warning signs of this phenomenon, sprouting up across the world from Eastern Europe to South America, in order to arm the reader with the tools to recognise it and take action.\nWeaving memoir, history and clear-sighted argument, Temelkuran proposes alternative answers to the pressing—and too often paralysing—political questions of our time. How to Lose a Country is an exploration of the insidious ideas at the core of these movements and an urgent, eloquent defence of democracy.\nThis 2024 edition includes a new foreword by the author.

How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism

Self-Help

Temelkuran, Ece

Self-Esteem

A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer.\nMother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.”\n“Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.\nWith the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.

Mother Mary Comes to Me

Biographies & Memoirs

ROY, ARUNDHATI

Arts & Literature

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