The countdown is on for the Giller Prize awards, Canada’s most prestigious book prize, which has been awarded in the past to iconic scribes like Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Mordecai Richler, André Alexis, Esi Edugyan and many more. Each year, Canada’s literati dust off their finest threads and make their way to a hot-ticket gala in Toronto, presided over by a witty host – this year Rick Mercer takes the stage – to see who will take home the $100,000 prize for the best work of fiction published in English (the remaining finalists receive $10,000 each). The event takes place on Nov. 17, but Zed has been covering the contenders – 2020 Giller winner Souvankham Thammavongsa, previous Giller short-list nominees, Mona Awad and Emma Donoghue (both in 2016), three-time novelist Eddy Boudel Tan and debut author Emma Knight – throughout the year. Here is our roundup of the five short-listed books. And be sure to check back on Nov. 18th for a wrap-up of the big night. 

Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa
Author’s Home Base: Toronto

Readers have been waiting for the next book since the award-winning Laotian-Canadian poet won the 2020 Giller and O. Henry for her short-story collection How to Pronounce Knife. This new novel of class, labour and loneliness unfurls over the course of a typical summer day. It’s a day in the life (and internal monologue) of Ning, a quirky and conflicted nail salon owner, overseeing staff as they toil over oblivious privileged clients. To them, she’s one of the five generic, interchangeable immigrant service workers (all named Susan). It’s a simple story that will linger with you. –Nathalie Atkinson

We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
Author’s Home Base: La Jolla, California, and Boston, Massachusetts

Out of the frying pan and into the fire – or from dark academia into publishing, as this case may be. In the follow-up to her hallucinatory 2019 hit Bunny, about navigating harsh university cliques, Awad’s heroine Samantha is now a published author on a book tour when she gets kidnapped by her frenemies, the Bunnies. Described as Heathers meets Frankenstein, this sequel pulls us back to a literary landscape worth revisiting. –NA 

The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
Author’s Home Base: London, Ont.

A French railway disaster in 1895 animates the Canadian-Irish writer’s (Room, The Wonder) new historical novel. The notorious and spectacular derailment at Gare de l’Ouest (now Montparnasse), which saw the locomotive crash into the station’s façade and onto the street below, threw passengers from the cars, and crew were later charged with negligent injury and manslaughter. In Donoghue’s reimagining, there’s as much intrigue among the diverse passengers as in its dramatic terminus: the story follows the personal journeys of those on board over the course of the single day. –NA

The Tiger and the Cosmonaut by Eddy Boudel Tan
Author’s Home Base: Vancouver 

There are deeply considered and very suspenseful page-turners. And then there is The Tiger and the Cosmonaut. Eddy Boudel Tan’s third novel, which stacks its plot with some resonant points about identity before knocking readers sideways with its genuinely startling finale. When the elderly patriarch of an immigrant Chinese family begins acting strangely, his three estranged adult children return to their small B.C. hometown to consider next steps. But the past – with all its lovers, scandals and tragedies — refuses to recede, forcing narrator Casper Han and his relatives to confront fraught family dynamics fanned in part by locally held racism, homophobia, superstition and, especially, by the enigmatic, decades-old disappearance of Casper’s twin brother Sam. If that seems like a lot of narrative for one novel, trust Boudel Tan to pull it together seamlessly with precise, elegant prose. Readers backtracking after the big reveal will discover richly human insights seeded throughout an airtight mystery. —Kim Hughes

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight
Author’s Home Base: Toronto

Don’t be fooled by its curious title: The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, the debut novel by Canadian author and entrepreneur Emma Knight, isn’t a biology book. “It’s not about octopuses, and it’s a mouthful, I know, but it’s a fun conversation starter,” the 36-year-old writer says from her home in Toronto.

After penning a pair of cookbooks, Knight tried her hand at fiction-writing in secret, and since she has two young daughters and a day job as the co-founder of Greenhouse Juice Co., scribbled it in a notebook whenever she could steal a few minutes to herself.

That brings us to the significance of the female octopus, which you may be wondering about, and relates to motherhood and selflessness and sacrifice: After an octopus lays her eggs, cleaning and protecting them becomes her priority at all costs. Unable to leave their side, she stops looking for food, then stops eating, then wastes away. By the time the eggs hatch, she’s starved to death. For anyone struggling with the demands of motherhood and loss of identity or self, it’s a real nighttime keeper-upper.

The life cycle of the common octopus is a passing phrase turned thematic metaphor in Knight’s coming-of-age novel, which sees 18-year-old Canadian Penelope studying languages in Scotland. Shy, uncertain and on her own for the first time, the commitmentphobe (who has a gaggle of uni friends who provide comic relief) is piecing together the reasons behind her parents’ divorce by connecting with her British father’s old friend from old-world money: famed writer Lord Elliott Lennox, who lives on a Scottish country estate with his kind, stay-at-home wife, Christina; their dashing university-age son, Sasha; and his cousin, George, who was adopted when her mother, the flighty and unreliable Margot, abandoned her to their care. When Margot’s buried secrets are finally spilled, Penelope learns how and why she fits into the family – and whether she wants to stay. –Rosemary Counter

See our full interview with Knight here.