Canada Geese and Apple Chatney

 

©Sasenarine Persaud. All rights reserved, Sasenarine Persaud. Unauthorized reproduction in any form or format is prohibited and is a violation of copyright law.

 

The stories in this collection, which received the K.M. Hunter Award (Toronto), are set in Toronto, New York, Miami and Georgetown and delve into such diverse themes as migrations and illegal immigration, a grappling with identities, interreligious marriage, love and life under a brutal de facto South American dictatorship, the colonialism of "the art of writing," and the dog as a knower of truth, endowed with the ability to see into the past and future. 

 

The title story, 'Canada Geese and Apple Chatney' has appeared in the Journey Prize Anthology, the Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, and An Anthology of Colonial and Postcolonial Short Fiction.   

 

"The award-winning collection of stories Canada Geese and Apple Chatney by the novelist and poet Sasenarine Persaud touches all bases: Vedic myths, Indian anticolonial history, experiences in the Caribbean, Canada, and the U.S."--Peter Nazareth, World Literature Today

 

Ray Deonandan observed in The Toronto Review, "Persaud brandishes his skill with strong dialogue and elegant characters, providing five autonomously strong stories in the first half of the book. In contrast, he has approached the second half with a deliberate literary game plan – in first, second and third person narratives, providing a multidimensional dissonance akin to Japanese cinema… the accessibility of their brilliantly-intertwined though seemingly guileless plots tells of their truth, of their limited need for fictionalization."