Scandal at the Alphorn Factory

"[Barwin] is known as a gifted humourist and teller of magical, fantastical tales that fully immerse readers in dream-like worlds and explorations of the human condition, and those skills are on full display in this tome of magnificent collected works."—Open Book

"Barwin’s surrealism combines Chagallian levitation with Wallace Stevens’s supreme fiction, as he puzzles puzzles. Clockwise, counter-clockwise, and otherwise, Barwin’s page turns itself and turns itself, orchestrating each instrument through comedy and lyrical longing."—The Seabord Review

"The mystery of life is not explained, here, but it is revealed in symphonies of mind expansion. Take the journey through Barwin’s black hole; you’ll be amazed by what you’ll find."—The Miramichi Reader

"Scandal at the Alphorn Factory is a 40-year love affair with language where the absurd morphs into the soundest logic and the playful duels the profound. Daring in form, Barwin’s work harmonizes his signature wit with imagery that is striking, gorgeous and strange. Engaging imaginatively with the natural world, the body, the family, the future—every story is a surprise. A kaleidoscopic collection that affirms Barwin’s place among our Canadian literary treasures."—Anuja Varghese, author of Chrysalis

"Is Gary Barwin the Meryl Streep of Canadian Literature? Or the Stephen Curry? By which I mean: what range! These stories sound the depths of character, plot, style, and form with irreverent humour, musical language and boundless curiosity. So maybe he's our Jacques Cousteau—if the guy had stayed home, traded his submarine for a laptop computer, and made up stories about all the things he didn’t know."—Pasha Malla, author of All You Can Kill

“For over four decades now, in between children’s birthday parties, dog walks, and phatic conversations with neighbours, Gary Barwin has been sending emergency communiqués—in the form of allegories, parables, tall tales, and street jokes—from the family hearth in Hamilton, Ontario. He is a maestro of the suburban surreal, reinscribing the liberated and liberating aesthetics of the marvellous with an ethics of care. Our punny chimerical ventriloquial dummy, Barwin speaks out from the head of Kafka, heart of Éluard, and soul of Edson.”—Alessandro Porco, editor of For It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist. He is the author of 31 books including Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity and Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was shortlisted for the Vine Award, and was chosen for Hamilton Reads 2023. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was long listed for Canada Reads. His 2022 poetry collection, The Most Charming Creatures won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. A PhD in music composition, he has been writer-in-residence and taught at many universities, colleges and libraries. He lives in Hamilton and at garybarwin.com.

Publication date: September 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781738009886
eISBN: 9781738009893
Paperback: 304 pages

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