From Our Editors
What do 1920s Hollywood and the Canadian West's Cypress Hills
Massacre have in common? They provide the vivid background of
Guy Vanderhaeghe's masterfully crafted novel,
The Englishman's Boy. Richly textured,
this epic novel weaves together the stories of two men - a young
drifter and a crippled journalist - separated by time and place.
Critically acclaimed, this historical novel of control, gluttony
and the pull of dreams won Vanderhaeghe the
Governor General's Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the
Giller Prize.
From the Publisher
The Englishman's Boy brilliantly links together Hollywood
in the 1920s with one of the bloodiest, most brutal events of the
nineteenth-century Canadian West - the Cypress Hills Massacre.
Vanderhaeghe's rendering of the stark, dramatic beauty of the
western landscape and of Hollywood in its most extravagant era -
with its visionaries, celebrities, and dreamers - provides vivid
background for scenes of action, adventure, and intrigue. Richly
textured, evocative of time and place, this is an unforgettable
novel about power, greed, and the pull of dreams that has at its
centre the haunting story of a young drifter - "the Englishman's
boy" - whose fate, ultimately, is a tragic one.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Guy Vanderhaeghe was born in Esterhazy,
Saskatchewan, in 1951. He is the author of four novels, My
Present Age (1984), Homesick (1989), co-winner of the
City of Toronto Book Award, The Englishman's Boy (1996),
winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the
Saskatchewan Book Awards for Fiction and for Best Book of the Year,
and a finalist for The Giller Prize and the prestigious
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and, most recently,
The Last Crossing (2002), a long-time national bestseller
and winner of the Saskatoon Book Award, the Saskatchewan Book
Awards for Fiction and for Book of the Year, and the Canadian
Booksellers Association Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year,
and a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book.
He is also the author of three collections of short stories,
Man Descending (1982), winner of the Governor's General's
Award and the Faber Prize in the U.K., and The Trouble With
Heroes (1983), and Things As They Are (1992).
Acclaimed for his fiction, Vanderhaeghe has also written plays.
I Had a Job I Liked. Once. was first produced in 1991, and
won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Drama. His second
play, Dancock's Dance, was produced in 1995.
Guy Vanderhaeghe lives in Saskatoon, where he is a Visiting
Professor of English at S.T.M. College.
From the Hardcover edition.
Trade Paperback
344 Pages, 5.39 x 8.39 x 0.65 in
September 13, 1997
McClelland & Stewart
English
077108692X
9780771086922