Austin Clarke was born in Barbados, and came to Canada to
attend university in 1955. He has had a varied and distinguished
career as a broadcaster, civil-rights leader, diplomat, and
professor. He has published ten novels, including the Toronto
Trilogy (The Meeting Point, Storm of Fortune, and The Bigger
Light), The Origin of Waves, winner of The Rogers Communications
Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, The Question, a finalist for the
Governor General’s Award, and, most recently, The Polished Hoe,
winner of The Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for
Best Book. He is also the author of six short-story collections,
including When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks,
When Women Rule, There Are No Elders, and Choosing His Coffin: The
Best Stories of Austin Clarke; and three memoirs, Growing Up Stupid
Under the Union Jack, winner of the 1980 Casa de las Americas
Literary Prize of Cuba, A Passage Back Home, and Pig Tails ’n
Breadfruit: Rituals of Slave Food. Austin Clarke: A Biography by
Stella Algoo-Baksh was published in 1994 and The Austin Clarke
Reader, selected writings, in 1996. He is the recipient of numerous
honours, including the 1999 W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize, the Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, and the Order of
Canada.
Austin Clarke lives in Toronto.
“A seductively intriguing psychological novel about male-female
relationships.… Treats the sense, the intuition and the
intellect.”
–Hamilton Spectator
“Haunting and provocative.…Clarke strips back the day-to-day
quality of ordinary marriage, and reveals the clumsy iridescence of
raw human want.”
–Globe and Mail
“Austin Clarke is a man who understands the power of language: the
force of a few words that can make or break an argument: words that
traverse the shaky narrative terrain between truth and lies.”
–Ottawa Citizen
“A gem.… The Question is mesmerizing in the best sense; it is
poignant, and at times wonderfully funny.”
–Winnipeg Free Press
“There is a rare kind of psychological novel that focuses tightly
on the relationship between two or three characters.…The most
successful of these, such as Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair
and Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, are notable for their intensity and
their uncanny ability to capture the essence of a time and place.…
[The Question] belongs perfectly in this company.… Clarke’s
language is unstintingly sensual, the unveiling wandering voice of
a poet lost in the body of a judge.”
–Globe and Mail
“Austin Clarke’s The Question is a powerful portrait of a complex
and enigmatic character caught up in the politics of race,
dislocation and gender. His mastery of dialogue and dialect and his
humorous insights into the vicissitudes of human experience make
this novel unforgettable.”
–Jury citation, Governor General’s Award
“[Clarke is] a consummate storyteller…”
–Quill & Quire
“While many first- and second-generation immigrant writers lucidly
describe the alienation and confusion of cultural dislocation, few
also tell poignant stories about human relationships that, without
the force of their multicultural themes, would stand on their own
literary merits.The Question does. It leaves the reader with
unforgettable images of urban alienation and failed romance.… A
moving read.…”
–National Post
“This novel is very rich and will enrich those who choose to read
it. The Question challenges us to think about personal, familial
and national identity; cross-cultural relationships; immigration
and citizenship; Canadian culture. About creating family and
culture where we live, integrating what we bring with us into the
place where we land. About making ourselves at home.”
–January Magazine
“What Clarke achieves in The Question is something akin to Ford
Maddox Ford’s brilliant characterization of the unreliable narrator
in The Good Soldier.”
–Vancouver Sun
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