Stranger : A Novel

Stranger
Author(s): David Bergen

Matthew Thomas, New York Timesbestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves, calls Stranger a work of genius. . . . [Bergen] is one of our living greats.

National bestseller, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

The gripping novel from David Bergen, the Giller Prizewinning author of The Time in Between and a CBC Canada Reads finalist for The Age of Hope

Compelling and timely, the Toronto Star declares Stranger an engrossing human exploration of displacement and inequality. . . . Bergen paints a dire reality that isnt far off from the current state of affairs in the United States. Stranger feels like a caution, warning of the dangers of continued disunity and the growing rift from inequality.

The reader sees the world through the eyes of so, a young Guatemalan woman who works at a fertility clinic in the highlands of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas and is the secret lover of the married American resident doctor. But their tryst is short-lived, and he disappears back to the US before so can disclose her pregnancy. After the birth of her daughter, the baby is taken from her and so is informed that her child is in America. She makes her way north, eventually crossing illegally into a United States that has become increasingly divided between rich and poor. Travelling without documentation and with little money, so descends into a world full of danger and mistrust, determined to reclaim her child.

With its themes of dislocation and disruption, of power and vulnerability, Stranger is a powerfully resonant political novel for our times.

Review(s):
The gorgeous lyricism of David Bergens latest novel recalls the atmosphere of Hemingways The Old Man and the Sea.
Stranger is an engrossing human exploration of displacement and inequality. . . . Bergen paints a dire reality that isnt far off from the current state of affairs in the United States. Stranger feels like a caution, warning of the dangers of continued disunity and the growing rift from inequality
Inventive and electrifying. . . . Skilled and gutsy. . . . Brilliant and utterly convincing. . . . [Stranger] reminds us that even in the best-known stories, something unexpected is always lurking, if you go deep enough.
David Bergen has written arguably his best novel. . . . The book manages the rare feat of being profound and important but at the same time absolutely gripping.
Leaving Tomorrow is a contemplative novel full of the hope that comes with youth, but in the end it becomes clear that like life, the journey is the real destination.
Leaving Tomorrow is pure pleasure. It doesnt parade its wit or its wisdom but is a sensitive, perceptive and disarmingly honest bildungsroman which deserves to take its place alongside such mid-western Canadian classics as Who Has Seen the Wind and A Complicated Kindness.
This is a moving and engaging novel of grief and loss, impeccably written and fully imagined.
At once grand and intimate, Stranger is an epic story with a very human heart.
. . . an intriguing synthesis of Bergens previous works, blending the earlier novels focus on the suppressed lusts, rivalries, and consolations that underpin family and community with the broader, more topical concerns of The Retreat and The Time in Between.
breathtaking . . . a work of genius



ISBN:9781443450980