On April 16, 2025, we hosted the Giller Book Club with Claire Messud and Susan Swan. Claire is the author of THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY, which was longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. Susan is the author of THE WIVES OF BATH.

About THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY, published by WW Norton:
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

About THE WIVES OF BATH, published by Vintage Canada:
Swan’s international bestselling novel The Wives of Bath, is both a shocking Gothic tale about a murder in a girls’ boarding school and an adolescent confession. Mouse and Paulie, reluctant fourteen-year-old boarders at Bath Ladies College, are confronted by the slippery quest for one small, vital thing: the thing that definitively makes boys different from girls.

Please visit gillerprize.ca/giller-book-club to learn about upcoming book clubs.