The Walled Garden is a unique collection of short essays addressing a wide variety of subjects. From an exploration of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Federico Fellini to an update on the linguistic theories of Ernest Fenollosa, from a look into the true nature of time and the present moment to a discussion of 'psychic birthplaces', from reflections on Paleolithic caves, poetry and art, The Walled Garden includes the wild, the tamed and the stunningly unusual.

This magical new novel by Governor General and Trillium Prize nominee Mark Frutkin, set in 13th century Venice and Cathay, is a dazzling fresco of shimmering language, brimming with golden tableaus of arid deserts and cobblestone alleys, the wafting scent of cardomin and the mystical trill of a praying friar. It is the story of Marco Polo as he is about to set sail on an arduous and lengthy pilgrimage with his father, uncle and faithful guide across the sun-soaked silk route, the rich path...

Short-listed for the 1988 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, Ottawa-Carleton Book Award and Trillium Book AwardParis, the City of Light, was once the scene of a brilliant magnesium flare, host to the belle epoque from 1900 to 1914. Tempting poets, painters, writers, and composers from across Europe, the city relied on one man to move among them all-Guillaume Apollinaire. His contemporaries called him brilliant, mad, whimsical. He was the bastard son of an Itali...

Of one of Mark Frutkin’s previous books of verse, Poetry Canada Review said it provided "a supernatural fusion of the earthbound with the heavenly to forge the lightning of poetry." Divided into two sections, one inspired by ancient Chinese art, the other limning the ambiguities and incongruities of the contemporary human condition, Frutkin’s new volume of poetry, Iron Mountain, often presents human beings wandering in the wilderness between two abysses while still appreciating th...

In geology an erratic is a "boulder or rock formation transported some distance from its original source, as by a glacier." In award-winning novelist Mark Frutkin’s case, his movement from his native Cleveland. Ohio, was instigated by his wish to protest and resist the U.S. military draft during the Vietnam War, and his destination was Canada.An estimated 50,000 to 100,000 American Vietnam War draft resisters sought sanctuary in Canada. Many of these men stayed, became Canadian cit...

From Istanbul to New Delhi to Boulder, Colorado, through Venice, Paris, Rome, and points betweenAs travellers, we are always walking backwards, forever on the verge of stepping into the unknown, never knowing what waits around the next corner.You could be lost, forget your passport, fall ill. You could be served a bowl of food and not know whether it's animal, vegetable, or mineral. Even flushing the toilet can be an adventure.You are a child again, innocen...

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEARLONGLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZEOctavio Notre-Dame comes from a long line of bakers. At the establishment known throughout the eighth district as the cake-slice, he produces baguettes and brioches with timeless perfection. But like generations of Notre-Dame men before him, Octavio has never mastered the art of reading. His only knowledge of the worl...

Now an HBO Limited Series from Executive Producers Park Chan-wook and Robert Downey Jr., Streaming Exclusively on MaxWinner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for FictionWinner of the 2016 Edgar Award for Best First NovelWinner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionOne of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyOne of TIME’s 100 Best...

The Nobel Prize winner and one of today's most prominent contemporary Turkish writers delivers a novel that is a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, a brilliant symposium on the power of art, and a “modern classic … rich and essential” (Los Angeles Times Book Review)—set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul.The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book ...

Thrust into the unlikely role of professional "literary walking tour" guide, an expat in Paris provides the most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of the city in years.In this enchanting Paris memoir, acclaimed author and long-time resident John Baxter remembers his yearlong experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Baxter sets off with unsuspecting tourists in tow on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers of the past. This love letter to Frenc...

Heaven's Thieves is a collection engaged with the big questions -- What are bodies for? What does it mean to be alive? What is beauty and why does it have such power over us? What is the point of art? -- and the urgent ones -- how to live in a shattered ecology, what to do about grief, illness, betrayal. Sinclair turns her attention to these questions with fearless curiosity, economy, and an originality born of her willingness to pursue her own line of inquiry to its limit. These poems get...

New York Times bestselling author Bertrice Small begins a captivating quartet of novels in this “Renaissance romance fraught with conflicting family dynamics and ruthless dangers!...The plotting is spellbinding”(Fresh Fiction).Florentine silk merchant Giovanni Pietro d’Angelo and his wife want nothing more than to marry their daughters to wealthy men of distinction. But when their son is implicated in a tragic accident, it is their eldest daughter, Bianca,...