And the winner is….. Oisín Curran
Book*hug is pleased to share the wonderful news that Oisín Curran, author of Blood Fable, is the winner of the 2018 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award!
Oisín received the prize at the 10th annual Atlantic Book Awards Gala on Thursday, May 10, in Halifax, NS.
Managed by the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, the $25,000 CAD prize honours the work of fiction writers in the Atlantic region, and as Thomas Head Raddall, the original benefactor of the prize envisioned, it is meant to provide “the gift of time and peace of mind” so essential to the creation of new work.
About Blood Fable:
Set in 1980, a utopian community in Maine is on the verge of collapse. The charismatic leader’s authority teeters as his followers come to realize they’ve been exploited for too long. To make matters worse, the eleven-year-old son of one adherent learns that his mother has cancer. Taking refuge in his imagination, the boy begins to speak of another time and place. His parents believe he is remembering his own life before birth. This memory, a story within the story of Blood Fable, is an epic tale about the search for a lost city refracted through the lens of the adventures the boy loves to read. But strangely, as the world around them falls apart, he and his parents find that his story seems to foretell the events unfolding in their present lives.
Read an excerpt from Blood Fable at Open Book.
To celebrate this magnificent news, and because we think everyone should read this epic tale about boyhood, the bonds of family, and a search for a lost city, we’re offering a 25% discount on Blood Fable from now until June 1, 2018.
Order your copy of Blood Fable here.
BUT DON’T JUST TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT. HERE’S WHAT OTHERS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT BLOOD FABLE
—from the Jury Citation for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
“A family drama, a fantastical voyage, and a poetic reflection on love, death and betrayal, this extraordinary coming-of-age novel exposes the difficult relationship between free-thought and blind faith, evasion and enlightenment. Oisín Curran’s Blood Fable is an adventure for the heart and soul.”
—Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Johanna Skibsrud
“Curran’s vision of boyhood is perfect in details and sublimely moving.”
— Eugene Lim, author of Dear Cyborgs
This is a joy of a novel, glittering, wondrous, and strange. I remain in its thrall.”
—Rebecca Silver Slayter, author of In the Land of Birdfishes
“An ambitious undertaking, beautifully executed.”
—Atlantic Books Today
“Blood Fable‘s sly reflection upon its own devices, its insistence that the reader continually reconsider their own tentative interpretation, provides one of its greatest satisfactions.”
—Canadian Notes and Queries
And now, once more with feeling, from all of us here at Team Book*hug,
CONGRATULATIONS OISÍN!
