JURY CITATION
“The books on this year’s Giller Prize longlist represent a range of Canadian identities and experiences: characters on the open prairies, claustrophobic communities in our urban centers, and boundless representations of the imagined worlds in which Canadians find themselves. The powerful voices on this longlist depict a Canada and a world that’s compelling, dangerous, and simultaneously compassionate and inviting. These works illuminate the everyday and the otherworldly, considering what it means to be human in these funny, sad, joyful, and complicated times. Our longlist explicates the best and worst of us and elevates stories that are concerned with our country and the world beyond its borders, our preoccupations with the land we inhabit and disturb. These books investigate what it means to live here. Whenever that might be. They uncover unexpected communities and friendships, rendering with precision and beauty the anxieties and heartaches tethered to life and death. These texts demonstrate how we are an interconnected, global community, however cacophonous our collective cries. The power of the voices on this year’s longlist astonished the judges. These authors urgently compel readers to be transported, to be lifted up, and ultimately, to love.”
