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Book Reviews in June 1999 Issue

Note from Editor
Note from the Editor
by Olga Stein
As we wrap up for the summer, we leave you with an extra thick issue for your reading pleasure.The charming and mesmerizing raconteur, Josef Skvorecky, is our featured Great Author. The Czech-born writer has resided
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Shakespeare A Life
by Park Honan,

460 pages $72.5 TC
ISBN: 0198117922
Shakespeare The Invention of the Human
by Harold Bloom,

Putnam Publishing Group, The
745 pages $35 TC
ISBN: 1573221201
Book Review
Falstaff's Thin Man or the Tangled Bard of Our Imaginings
by Alexander Leggatt
Afew dates, a few documents, a scattering of contemporary references-in an age of tell-all biography, Shakespeare seems to offer slim pickings. Park Honan's method in Shakespeare: A Life is to work from what we know of the bard's
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Rereading Frye
by Salusinszky,

pages $65 CT
ISBN: 080204252X
Book Review
Retiring the Sacred Cow of Ideology
by Nella Cotrupi
Northrop Frye, one of Canada's outstanding intellectuals, was also an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada. Except for a brief and tortured stint in 1937 as a student minister in Saskatchewan (which he painstakingly documented in letters to
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What Remains to Be Discovered Mapping the Secrets of the Universe, the Origins of Life & the Future of the Human Race
by John Maddox,

434 pages $34.5 TC
ISBN: 068482292X
Book Review
Darwin's Legacy - Inventing a Brave New World
by Ronald Sousa
No one scientist, goes the common lament, could keep up now with a single discipline, let alone with science as a whole. If there's an exception to this, John Maddox is it. After over twenty years as Editor of Nature, the world's leading science
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Ockham's Razor A Search For Wonder In An Age Of Doubt
264 pages $24.99
ISBN: 1552630315
Book Review
Putting God Back on the Agenda
by Ray Robertson
In much the same pleasing interdisciplinary mode as his popular history of communications technologies, Spirit of the Web, Wade Rowland has combined travel memoir, medieval history, philosophical speculation, and technological reflection to give
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For the Time Being
by Annie Dillard,

192 pages $21.5 TC
ISBN: 0375403809
Book Review
Expedition into the Welter of Collecting Matter
by Jennifer Duncan
Annie Dillard is the author of ten books, including the Pulitzer prizewinning Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek, a memoir, An American Childhood, and the lit-major's bedside bible, Living by Fiction. Her latest, For the Time Being, is an elegant
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Bite the Stars
by Eliza Clark,

pages $26 TC
ISBN: 000225512X
Book Review
Mother-Love
by Sharon Butala
Eliza Clark's first novel, Miss You Like Crazy (HarperCollins), was a headlong "road" book about a lovable, but slightly batty, young southern woman trying-as always in such novels-to find a place for herself in the world. Reading Miss You Like Crazy
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Bill Reid
by Doris Shadbolt,

pages $35 TP
ISBN: 0888946066
Book Review
Wunderkind of the Haida
by Stephanie Farrington
In a country struggling with issues of land claims and rights of self-government within aboriginal groups, it is impossible to publish a book on any aspect of Native life without making some sort of political statement, however subtle. The recent reissue
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Book Review
Excerpts from 'Two Murders in My Double Life'
That night, as we were driving home from Professor Kelly's party, another strange scene was played out... It was shortly after midnight, and the night was standard horror-movie footage. Thunder, lightning, and ferocious wind.
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Holding One's Time in Thought The Political Philosophy of W. J. Stankiewicz
by Bogdan Czaykowski, Samuel V. LeSelva, Samuel V. LaSelva,

410 pages $37.95 TC
ISBN: 0921870515
Book Review
Outing the Barbarians
by Robert Sibley
The lives of philosophers are usually quite dull, at least compared to those of rock stars and libidinous presidents. Immanuel Kant, for one, never left the German town of Königsberg where he was born. And his life was so regimented that the townspeople
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Dyslexicon
by Stephen Cain,

80 pages $22.95 SP
ISBN: 1552450279
Outside the Hat
by Gary Barwin,

pages $0 TC
ISBN: 1552450309
Fit to Print
by Karen MacCormack, Alan Halsey,

96 pages $35 TC
ISBN: 1552450317
Book Review
Haydn Intersections of Sense
by Paul Dutton
Poetry has long since come to be a chancy term, conveying radically different meanings to different people-from the hopelessly ignorant who expect it to rhyme, to the resolutely ultra-refined who insist that it be stripped of emotion and meaning. Between
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Where Words Like Monarchs Fly
by George McWhirter,

150 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 1895636183
Book Review
Mexican Verse in Free Trade
by Martha Nandorfy
Where Words Like Monarchs Fly is a timely English translation of Mexican poetry spanning three generations of poets whose work has not been readily available to North American readers. What makes this anthology especially significant to Canadian
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At the Full & Change of the Moon
by Dionne Brand,

pages $32.95 TC
ISBN: 0676971016
Book Review
Black Moon Over Trinidad
by Jack Illingworth
Many readers turn away from a book when they learn from the press that the author is "political". Even if they are comfortable with having their own beliefs challenged, they are wary of encountering didacticism when all they are really interested in is
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Felix Roth
272 pages $21.95
ISBN: 0773760490
Book Review
The Apprenticeship of Cary Fagan
by Michael Greenstein
Traditionally, Canadian-Jewish literature has been a tale of two ghettos: Montreal's St. Urbain area and Winnipeg's north end. More recently, Toronto has emerged as a blurred focal centre in the fiction of Matt Cohen, Anne Michaels, and Cary Fagan.
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Making Every Vote Count Reassessing Canada's Electoral System
200 pages $22.95
ISBN: 1551112566
Book Review
First Past the Post
by Amir Abedi
As the last two federal elections pointed out only too clearly, Canada's "first-past-the-post" (FPTP) electoral system has often exacerbated the extremely regionalized political party representation in the House of Commons. Then, in 1997, when the Liberal
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Cousins' Wars Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare & the Triumph of Anglo-America
by Kevin P. Phillips,

400 pages $47.5 TC
ISBN: 0465013694
Book Review
Family Feuds
by Nathan Greenfield
Kevin Phillips chose his title well: by invoking the idea of a family romance, he both telegraphs that there is an Anglo-American world (to which we Canadians belong, though not quite in the way he imagines), and he opens up enough space for forgotten
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History of Celibacy
by Elizabeth Abbott,

pages $32 TC
ISBN: 0002557355
The Lifestyle A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers
by Terry Gould,

304 pages $32.95 TC
ISBN: 0679309527
Book Review
Sperm Wars - Sex, Celibacy and Suburbanites
by Lorraine Johnson
Courtesy of Steve Mason, a strategy to achieve world peace: turn the United Nations into a swingers club. After all, asks Steve, "How do you drop a bomb onto people that you've just had an orgasm with?" Maybe his numbers pose certain tactical
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Canadian Garden Design
200 pages $40
ISBN: 0670876399
100 Easy-to-Grow Native Plants
by Lorraine Johnson,

pages $26.95 TP
ISBN: 067930987X
The New Garden How to Design, Build and Plant Your Garden with Nature in Mind
192 pages $16.99
ISBN: 0751303674
New Perennials
144 pages $16.95
ISBN: 1551108216
Hostas and Other Shade Loving Plants
144 pages $16.95
ISBN: 1551108232
Shocking Beauty
152 pages $49.95
ISBN: 1551922207
Amazing Annuals New Plants & Varieties: Over 300 Annuals for Summer-Long Color
by Marjorie M. Hogue,

pages $0 TC
ISBN: 1552093077
The New City Gardener Natural Techniques & Necessary Skills for a Successful City Garden
by Judith Adam,

pages $0 TC
ISBN: 1552093131
Ornamental Vegetable Garden
120 pages $26.99
ISBN: 1894020553
Really Small Garden
192 pages $39.99
ISBN: 1902757068
Book Review
Designs on Nature
by Liz Primeau
`Tis the growing season-and the current crop of gardening books should inspire green-thumbers of all persuasions a-plenty. For all his celebrity as an international garden designer and writer, John Brookes is a down-to-earth, practical man.
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Interviews
Odds Are On The Anxious Girls - Sherie Posesorski speaks with Zsuzsi Gartner
by Sherie Posesorski
Zsuzsi Gartner's first short story collection, All The Anxious Girls On Earth (Key Porter Books), has hit a critical nerve in reviewers. The clever, contemporary, playful, inventive,
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Interviews
Accidental Tourist in the Dark Realm - Diana Brebner speaks with Stephanie Bolster
by Diana Brebner
I spoke with Stephanie Bolster in late March, in the restaurant of the National Gallery of Canada. We've known each other for a few years, and have often met for lunch at the same table with a view of the Parliament Buildings high
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Interviews
Excavating TO's Alexandria - Branko Gorjup speaks with Greg Gatenby
by Branko Gorjup
In addition to being a formidable literary impresario-known to most people at home and abroad as the Artistic Director of the famed weekly Harbourfront Reading Series and the annual International Festival of Authors in Toronto-Greg Gatenby
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Letters to Editor
To the Editor
BANKING ON QUALITY POLEMICS. We were surprised, on reading François Lachance's review of our book, The Child and the Machine (Feb. 1999), to discover that it had been written by "Alice Armstrong" and "Charles Clement"
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Technology, Place, & Architecture The Jerusalem Seminar
by Kenneth Frampton, Arthur Spector, Lynne Rosman, Stanford Anderson, Julian Beinart, Robert Oxman, Joseph Rykwert, Kaarin Taipale, Kenneth Frampton,

288 pages $53.5 TC
ISBN: 0847820858
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Architecture
by Francois Lachance
The record reads Raimund Abraham stating that "Architecture doesn't necessarily have to be built; it can also be written." This, not in a lecture, but in an interview. It is these informative chats that capture the essence of a seminar as one compares
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The Lion in the Room Next Door
255 pages $29.99
ISBN: 0771080662
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Alana Wilcox
"Not a sudden glorious downpour but one that gathers slowly, the sky taking on colour like wounded skin, the thunder muffled at first, then ominous, moving closer, until lightning strafes the clouds..." Like the storm she describes, Merilyn
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The Spirit Cabinet
by Paul Quarrington,

pages $32.95 TC
ISBN: 0679309853
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Kevin O'Keeffe
Paul Quarrington's Spirit Cabinet (Random House Canada, 304 pages, $32.95) is a zany comic-mystery that centres on a pair of German-born misfits, Jurgen and Rudolfo, who, through a series of fateful occurrences and misadventures, become celebrated
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Swimming with Jonah
by Audrey Schulman,

pages $32 TC
ISBN: 0380976862
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Jennifer Williams
As in her well-received first novel, The Cage, Audrey Schulman's Swimming with Jonah (Avon Books, 261 pages, $32 cloth) places the central character in an exotic locale where she is tested physically and mentally.
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Lost Between Houses
by David Gilmour,

pages $28.95 TC
ISBN: 0679308814
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Ted Whittaker
David Gilmour's fourth novel, Lost Between Houses (Random House, 229 pages, $29.95 cloth), departs slightly from the downtown Toronto fictioneer's chosen theme-immature Hogtown bourgeois WASPs behaving badly, out loud; or, as Gilmour himself
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The Follow
by Linda Spalding,

240 pages $29.95 TC
ISBN: 1550139290
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Anthropology
by Eva Tihanyi
Linda Spalding, best known as a novelist (The Paper Wife and Daughters of Captain Cook) and editor of the literary journal, Brick, has written a new book that is at once deeply personal and universally relevant.
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Lost August
96 pages $19.95
ISBN: 0887846351
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by Jack Illingworth
There could be no better summary of Esta Spalding's third book of poetry than its title, Lost August (House of Anansi Press, 96 pages, $19.95 paper): the collection is a short encyclopaedia of loss. By mixing loss with its necessary
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Mean
86 pages $19.95
ISBN: 0887846343
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by rob mclennan
In his long-anticipated first collection of poems, Mean (House of Anansi Press, 86 pages, $19.95 paper), Toronto's Ken Babstock has everything: love, hate, hope. He plies the importance of friends and family loyalty.
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Two Eyes Are You Sleeping
by Heather O'Neill,

60 pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 0919688179
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by rob mclennan
Two eyes are you sleeping (78 pages, $12.95 paper), Montreal writer Heather O'Neill's first full-length poetry collection published through DC Books' New Writers series, is probably as close to perfect as a collection
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Songs for Relinquishing the Earth
by Jan Zwicky,

pages $12.95 TC
ISBN: 1894078004
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by rob mclennan
Originally self-published as a handmade and made-to-order book in 1996, Jan Zwicky's brilliant Songs for Relinquishing the Earth (88 pages, $12.95 paper) was subsequently reprinted by Brick Books late last fall after the word-of-mouth demand
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Wintersleep
by Marie-Claire Blais, Nigel Spencer,

120 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0921870604
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Drama
by Kathy Mezei
Marie-Claire Blais' Wintersleep (Ronsdale Press,143 pages, $14.95 paper) is a handsome book that presents the five short plays originally published in 1984 in French as Sommeil d'hiver by the feminist press,
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Hot Seat Theater Criticism for the New York Times, 1980-1993
by Frank Rich,

1050 pages $55.95 TC
ISBN: 0679453008
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Theatre
by Keith Garebian
In 1986, Frank Rich was dubbed the "Butcher of Broadway" by English comedian Rowan Atkinson. He was also assailed by David Merrick, Arthur Kopit, and Trevor Nun. Rich's criticism of David Hare and the latter's subsequent retort provoked
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Hermeneutics of Poetic Sense
by Mario Valdes,

pages $45 TC
ISBN: 0802042430
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Culture
by D Sloboda
"The critic can only help the reader to clarify his or her own reactions, to understand the event of reading as, at one and the same time, an alteration of world view and a transformation of self-understanding. Added to this confrontation between
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Single & Single
by John Le Carre,

Simon & Schuster Trade
352 pages $26 TC
ISBN: 0684859262
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Mystery
by Wayne Daniels
John le Carré's Single & Single (Viking, 337 pages, $36.99 cloth) begins with the murder, in very cold blood, of an English lawyer named Alfie Winser. We learn a great deal about this man very quickly-in all the time he has left,
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If I Were the Moon
32 pages $19.99
ISBN: 0385257449
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
If I Were The Moon is a gentle lullaby that is sure to engage and delight young readers. It's a wonderful treat for fans of Sheree Fitch, whose books include rambunctious and humorous favourites like There Were Monkeys In My Kitchen, Mabel Murple
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No Dragons for Tea Fire Safety for Kids (And Dragons)
by Jean Pendziwol, Martine Gourbault,

32 pages $14.95 TC
ISBN: 1550745697
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Erin Banting
Who better to demonstrate the importance of fire-safety to kids than a fire-breathing dragon? This is Jean Pendziwol's candidate of choice in her first picture book, No Dragons for Tea, as she takes kids through the safety fundamentals.
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Ribbon Rescue
by Robert N. Munsch, Eugenie,

Scholastic, Incorporated
pages $0 TC
ISBN: 0590890123
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
When you finish reading his latest book, Ribbon Rescue, you know that Robert Munsch is a great storyteller. Ribbon Rescue feels like a story being told to a great big group of high-spirited youngsters who can hardly keep still,
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Sassy Gracie
by James Sage, Pierre Pratt,

pages $17.99 TC
ISBN: 0333684273
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Erinn Banting
There's nothing like a pair of big, clunky, red shoes to make one feel a little feisty. Maybe a little too feisty, in the case of Gracie, the little girl who sports a pair in James Sage's Sassy Gracie.Gracie's shoes are a little too
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Flags
by Maxine Trottier, Paul Morin,

pages $18.95 TC
ISBN: 0773731369
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Sherie Posesorski
In Japanese Zen gardens, nature is artfully represented through the harmonious placement of differently sized stones, meticulously raked gravel and moss, and shielding evergreens and hedges. Its beauty is quiet, refined, and suggestive.
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Boy of the Deeps
32 pages $16.95
ISBN: 0888993560
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Sherie Posesorski
It's the turn of the century in Cape Breton, and young James is getting ready for his first day of working in a coal mine. His Da, himself a miner for twenty years, voices his confidence and pride in his son: "You have coal in your blood, same as me.
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Hydrofoil Mystery
by Eric Walters,

224 pages $0 TP
ISBN: 0141302208
Alexander Graham Bell An Inventive Life
by Elizabeth MacLeod, Barbara Spurll,

32 pages $6.95 TP
ISBN: 1550744585
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
It seems that the brilliant Canadian inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, is a hot (and fitting) subject these days for writers of children's fiction and educational books. Elizabeth MacLeod's Alexander Graham Bell: An Inventive Life
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Lord of the Fries & Other Stories
by Tim Wynne-Jones,

pages $0 TC
ISBN: 0888992742
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Marnie Parsons
The title of Tim Wynne-Jones's book isn't simply a nod to its first story, nor to William Golding's dark novel about the lie of childhood innocence and the human capacity for brutality. It's a clue to the spirited dynamic of this fine
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Touch of The Clown
223 pages $8.95
ISBN: 0888993579
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Sherie Posesorski
Escaping into entertainment proves to be both life-sustaining and life-denying in Glen Huser's first young adult novel, Touch of the Clown. The story turns on the hard social realities of child abuse, neglect, poverty, alcoholism, and AIDS
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Hidden World
by Alison Baird,

224 pages $0 TP
ISBN: 0140277552
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
Maeve O'Connor yearns for escape. It's bad enough she's a "Plain Jane", she can't even get a role in the school play because she's not one of the popular crowd. To make matters worse, her parents are embroiled in a squabble that is set to explode and
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What They Don't Know
by Anita Horrocks,

pages $9.99 PT
ISBN: 0773760016
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Julie Burtinshaw
Anita Horrocks has done it again. In her second novel for young adults, she has written a compelling, good-to-the-last-page story for teens and about teens. Narrator Kelly Farrell is a seventeen-year-old honours student who begins by telling us: "Most
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How the Heather Looks
by Joan Bodger,

Viking
pages $0 TC
ISBN: 0318820293
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
If you want to know just how important great children's books are in developing a lifelong passion for reading, flip through the pages of How The Heather Looks. You should find yourself whisked back in time as you re-encounter the books that were
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Douglas Fetherling
Douglas Fetherling - Silver Dollar Bard
by Douglas Fetherling
Richard Lemm's Milton Acorn: In Love and Anger (Carleton University Press, 279 pages $34.95 cloth) is surely one of the most thoughtful, probing, and professional Canadian literary biographies of recent times-and we supposedly are living
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Great Authors
High Shelves - Lessons in Evil and in Love
"For God's sake, open the universe a little more!" (Saul Bellow, The Dean's December) In the breaking hours of Victoria Day, I awoke to the distressed yelping of refugees from the rain.
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Great Authors
Great Authors of Our Time - Josef Skvorecky
Josef Skvorecky was born in 1924 in the Czech town of Náchod. During the Second World War, he spent two years as a slave labourer in a German aircraft factory. After the war, Skvorecky studied at Charles University in Prague
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Great Authors
A Never Written Letter to Judy Garland - Marek Kusiba speaks with Josef Skvorecky
This interview took place on May 6, 1999 at the home of Josef Skvorecky in Toronto. MK: You live on a dead-end street near the intersection of three "No Exit" signs. Do you consider exile a dead-end street?
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