No Man's Land

• John Vigna is an assistant professor creative writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His first book was the story collection Bull Head (Arsenal, 2012), which was also published in France by Editions Albin Michel and was named one of Quill and Quire’s best books of the year in Canada.

• John spent ten years writing his first novel, No Man’s Land, which is an unflinching study of a young woman attempting to elude the weight of fate, set in the western Canadian wilderness of the 1890s. It reverberates with an almost Gothic intensity, especially in scenes featuring Reverend Brown, a charismatic false prophet who bilks new followers at makeshift revivals.

• John was compelled to write this novel based on an event in his own family. In his own words: “This book took nearly a decade to write. It was inspired by a true story: when my twin (fraternal) brothers were born, they were not yet an hour old when my grandfather saw them for the first time in the nursery. He immediately went to the younger of the two – younger by six minutes - and took a look at my brother’s hands and declared, ‘Watch this one. He’s got the hands of a thief. ’ No one asked him why he said this and he never explained it. As that brother grew up, he did indeed become a petty thief to support his drug and alcohol addiction (he died of an overdose in his forties after spending his life in and out of jail). The story has always haunted me - was his life the result of being cursed/labelled when he was only one hour old? What role did my grandfather’s words play in the working out of my brother’s life? Did my brother have a chance at a better life for himself? What role did free will and predeterminism play in his life?”

• Thematically and tonally, the book has a lot in common with Carmac McCarthy’s The Road (young protagonist on the cusp of adulthood seeking survival and meaning in a hostile world where they are often alone or without family); Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance (Coffee House), (a young man travels across America in search of his brother); and Clifford Jackman’s The Winter Family, about a band of ruthless outlaws that makes its way across America during and post-Civil War.

© 2021 Arsenal Pulp Press (Rafbók): 9781551528670

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Rafbók: 8 november 2021