Days by Moonlight
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Coach House Books
Published:16th May '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Gulliver’s Travels meets The Underground Railroad: a road trip through the countryside – and the psyche – by the author of Fifteen Dogs. Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip by his parents’ friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. Alfred and the Professor encounter towns where Black residents speak only in sign language and towns that hold Indigenous Parades; it is a land of house burnings, werewolves, and witches. Complete with Alfred’s drawings of plants both real and implausible, Days by Moonlight is a Dantesque journey taken during the “hour of the wolf,” that time of day when the sun is setting and the traveller can’t tell the difference between dog and wolf. And it asks that perpetual question: how do we know the things we know are real, and what is real anyway? “A mash-up that is part fabulism, part faux biography, and part satire, Days by Moonlight conveys the experience of grief, managing to transform its inarticulable and symbolic weight into a finely wrought literary work.” —Quill and Quire
“This imaginative travelogue will amuse readers even as it raises weightier issues.” -- Publishers Weekly
“André Alexis’s fiction pulls off the nearly-impossible: it hearkens back to seemingly archaic modes of storytelling, then brings them seamlessly into the modern day, serving as a reminder of why these forms has power in the first place.” -- Tobias Carroll, LitHub, “19 Books You Should Read This April: Recommended Reading from Lit Hub Staff and Contributors”
“What’s so enjoyable about Days by Moonlight is that it turns the act of reading into traveling, and traveling into a constant swaying between wonder and bewilderment.” -- Full Stop
"With the dream-like touch of a magical realist, Alexis carries us away on a profound and hilarious drive through small-town Ontario as it’s never been seen before in search of a mysterious poet named Skennen. It’s a journey where the spiritual meets the commonplace and the bizarre, the underworld comes up for air when you least expect it, and the Divine patiently watches over all. Days by Moonlight is a funny, moving, and wholly original take on the quest narrative that liberates the imagination with a loud whoop of joy." —2019 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury
- Winner of Rogers Writer's Trust Fiction Prize 2019 (Canada)
- Winner of Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction 2017 (United States)
- Long-listed for Scotiabank Giller Prize 2019 (Canada)
ISBN: 9781552453797
Dimensions: 203mm x 127mm x 19mm
Weight: unknown
224 pages