Dying in Toronto

A compelling and inventive portrait of a refugee’s first year in Canada and the search for belonging

'Dying in Toronto' is lucid and tenacious, witty and sad, an essential book in her body of work, this account of her year in Canada as a refugee is now published in English for the first time.

All of Drndic’s award-winning work fluctuates between fact and fiction, and 'Dying in Toronto' gives an account of the author’s first year in Canada as a refugee, in 1995. While the book is written in form of essays, it is clearly shaped to tell of that year as a story, and the result is unique in both form and content, combining new techniques of creative personal confession and acute social perception, which offer a rare depth of insight and breadth of perspective on the real, difficult life of an immigrant.

Examining the instinct of the good citizen, our narrator considers the confusion of the multinational myth of the ‘Nee World’ through her highly refined, critical intellect. Along the way she creates nothing less than the portrait of a new literary figure – the contemporary intellectual refugee – a point of view at once of its time and acutely contemporary. 'Dying in Toronto' is lucid and tenacious, witty and sad, revealing once again the author’s inability to reconcilable with the status quo, and her committment to fight for justice.