The Beggar's Garden

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Longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Critically lauded, The Beggar’ s Garden is a brilliantly surefooted, strikingly original collection of nine linked short stories that will delight as well as disturb. The stories follow a diverse group of curiously interrelated characters, from bank manager to crackhead to retired Samaritan to web designer to car thief, as they drift through each other’ s lives in Vancouver’ s Downtown Eastside. These engrossing stories, free of moral judgment, are about people who are searching in the jagged margins of life— for homes, drugs, love, forgiveness— and collectively they offer a generous and vivid portrait of humanity, not just in Vancouver but in any modern urban centre. The Beggar’ s Garden is a powerful and affecting debut. Its individual stories have been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories and have been nominated for major awards, including a National Magazine Award for fiction. The collection has been longlisted for the Frank O’ Connor International Short Story Award.