Culture

A very Toronto novel: Michael Redhill on his Giller Prize win

Writers are ‘no longer shy’ about championing Toronto, says Redhill

Author Michael Redhill celebrates winning the 2017 Giller Prize for his novel "Bellevue Square" in Toronto on Monday, November 20, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Author Michael Redhill celebrates winning the 2017 Giller Prize for his novel “Bellevue Square” in Toronto on Monday, November 20, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Toronto author Michael Redhill took home the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize last night for Bellevue Square, a novel the prize jury declared full of “complex literary wonders.”

One of five very different nominated titles—“apples and oranges” Redhill said afterwards, “and passion fruits and pomegranates” — Bellevue Square is also a very Toronto novel.

The main character, a bookshop owner in the city’s Kensington Market area, is a relative newcomer to Toronto, and still trying to get a grip on its “deep well of weirdness.”

Within a CanLit that is developing powerful bodies of regional writing, Redhill’s hometown may be “having its moment,” says Redhill, 51.

Writers are “intensely rooted in their places, including this city — which has changed so much in our lifetimes—and they’re no longer shy about championing it.”

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