Along with Helm, who was nominated for the prize in 2004 for his novel In the Place of Last Things, the nominees for the $25,000 prize are Trevor Cole for Practical Jean (McClelland & Stewart), Emma Donoghue for Room (HarperCollins Publishers), Kathleen Winter for Annabel (House of Anansi Press) and Michael Winter for The Death of Donna Whalen (Hamish Hamilton Canada).

Jury members and authors Lisa Moore, Andrew Pyper and Eden Robinson read 143 titles submitted by 46 publishers. Each finalist will receive $2,500.

In Cities of Refuge, a single act of violence resonates through several lives, connecting close by fears to distant political terrors. At the story’s centre is the complex, intensely charged relationship between a 28-year-old woman and the father who abandoned her when she was young. The novel weaves a web of incrimination and inquiry, where mysteries live within mysteries and the power to save or condemn rests in the forces of history, and in the realm of our deepest longings.

Right: Michael Helm. Photo by Alexandra Rockingham.

Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre, hosted by CBC Radio One broadcast journalist Shelagh Rogers, on Nov. 2. The Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for short fiction, along with four other prizes will also be awarded during the evening.

For more information, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The Globe & Mail April 23. Helm was also interviewed:

Q: Where did the idea for this book come from?

I know exactly where the last two books started, the sentence or image they stared with, but this one has been torn down and built back up again so many times I don't think there's any original lumber left in it. For a long time, I wanted to write about Toronto because it's the place I've lived the longest and I am interested in cities of this size ... open cities in this moment.

Q: What is this moment?

Well, the start of the 21st century, the open city, for the usual reasons people find a city interesting, the mix of histories and stories and languages, the surfaces of the place, the so-called erotics of public spaces. But also because I also think it's true that almost anything can count as character in fiction, in the way that landscape can be character in Thomas Hardy. And I think cities sort of work in fiction the way people do, that they have an outward part of themselves that is a promotion of a mythology and a much more interesting and richer interior. And I know the city, I think I know it pretty well and have enough intuitions about it as well. It's full of dramatic possibilities, I think.

The complete is available on the Globe's Web site.

The Toronto Star also on April 27:

“I don’t know how marketable or sexy it is, but I think of it as a book about different kinds of belief,” says Helm, who will read from the novel Wednesday at Harbourfront Centre on a program that also features Russell Smith and Erin Moure.

“I wanted a book that was pleasurable on every level and, for me as a reader, one of those levels is a book that slightly resists easy understanding. There’s always more than one thing happening at a time, on the level of character, tone or language. I find that very pleasurable when I read.”

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

The post Professor Michael Helm interviewed and reviewed about his new novel appeared first on Research & Innovation.