Brother

by David Chariandy

Overview

''A brilliant, powerful elegy from a living brother to a lost one, yet pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life'' Marlon James, Winner of the Man Booker Prize

NOW A FILM STARRING LAMAR JOHNSON AND AARON PIERRE
WINNER OF THE ROGERS WRITERS'' TRUST FICTION PRIZE
WINNER OF THE TORONTO BOOK AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR

Michael and Francis are the bright, ambitious sons of Trinidadian immigrants. Coming of age in the outskirts of a sprawling city, the brothers battle against careless prejudices and low expectations.

While Francis aspires to a future in music, Michael dreams of Aisha, the smartest girl in their school, whose eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But one sweltering summer night the hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably cut short.

In this timely and essential novel, David Chariandy builds a quietly devastating story about the love between a mother and her sons, the impact of race, masculinity and the senseless loss of young lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408897287
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Publication date:	03/14/2019
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 5.16(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

David Chariandy grew up in Toronto and lives and teaches in Vancouver. He is the author of the novels Soucouyant, which received nominations from eleven literary awards juries, and Brother, which won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Toronto Book Award, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize and nominated for the 2019 Dublin Literary Award.

Editorial Reviews

The challenge for a novel set in a place where nothing ever changes is how to find room for a narrative to move ahead. Chariandy handles this skillfully, by traveling at once inward, into the intimate lives of his characters, and outward, connecting the diasporic community to a wider world of postcolonial migration.

The New York Times Book Review - Patrick Abatiell

★ 2018-05-01
A novel about the indignities, frustrations, and joy found in a Toronto public housing complex.The Park is a sprawling complex home to thousands of residents struggling to find work, take care of each other, and get through another day. Like so many of the Park's residents, Michael and Francis are the children of an immigrant single mother. Ruth came from Trinidad with dreams of becoming a nurse; instead, she's working multiple jobs, riding buses for hours, and coming home too exhausted to even sleep. Michael and Francis are learning how to survive in the Park as young men. They know how to posture, which guys to avoid, and how to act when the police roll through. Chariandy's second novel (Soucouyant, 2007) is a slender volume with the heart of a family epic. Alternating between Michael and Francis' teenage years and a present time in which everything is darker, sadder, and Francis is nowhere to be found, Chariandy reveals a world of violence, frustrated hopes, and the delicate family bonds necessary for survival. The prose is beautiful and unflinching without giving way to sentimentality: "I know now that by the age of fourteen, you feel it. You spot the threat that is not only about young men with weapons, about ‘gangs' and ‘predators,' but also the threat that is slow and somehow very old. A mother lecturing you about arrival and opportunity while her breath stinks of the tooth she can't just for the moment afford the time or money to fix." When violence and an increased police presence enter the Park, the creeping sense of doom inches closer and readers can feel the oncoming tragedy in their guts. In the other storyline, set in the present, Michael and his mother stumble toward healing and a brighter day. Their journey, like the novel itself, isn't always easy but it is absolutely necessary.An important, riveting novel about dreams, families, and the systems holding them back.

Kirkus Reviews