Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm a Monster
LAUNCH: TORONTO LIT UP -
OCTOBER 22ND, 7PM, MY HOUSE IN THE JUNCTION
NATALIE OLSEN: ALCUIN SOCIETY FOR BOOK DESIGN AWARD FOR PROSE FICTION (THIRD PLACE)
BOOK DESIGN OF THE YEAR NOMINATION: ALBERTA BOOK PUBLISHING AWARDS
“With his new short story collection Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster, Toronto writer Damian Tarnopolsky (Goya’s Dog) explores the full potential of the form, pressing to the limits of the genre. It’s a heady experiment, and a powerful reading experience… One of the most intriguing, original pieces of fiction you are liable to read this year."
-Robert J. Wiersema, Quill and Quire (starred review)
"Wistful, dark, and complex, Damian Tarnopolsky’s Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster is an idiosyncratic journey through all the messy, disparate, and contradictory parts of being, or becoming, a person."
-Jen Rawlinson, Hamilton Review of Books
“I've never read anything quite like this book. It's a gem whose facets seem familiar until you turn it slightly and find it refracting in a completely unpredictable way: by turns searching, scary, and humane.”
– Craig Davidson
“Monk/Monster is a connected series of painful and amazing stories. One story concerns a job interview, a pistol, and a confused narrator just clinging to sanity, all told in a torrential stream of consciousness prose, a pleasing chaos, like Nabokov on acid. Often the reader is deep in a character’s head, yet outside watching and gathering clues. Nothing is spelt out and old family lore hovers; the effect is comic and chilling and the writing is artful and very impressive.”
– Mark Anthony Jarman
EVERY NIGHT I DREAM I’M A MONK, EVERY NIGHT I DREAM I’M A MONSTER offers an unfolding puzzle of the psyche that is at once explosive, funny, dark, sweet, pained, and utterly strange.
From the tangled threads of a messed-up family to the timeless themes of consciousness, love, art, and death, Damian Tarnopolsky’s narrative journey takes readers through past, present, and future, with stories spanning from 1980s England to present-day Canada, alongside visions of Renaissance France and worlds yet to come.
Each tale stands alone in its stylistic direction, only to connect and reflect back on each other in unexpected, touching, and sometimes jarring ways. As characters from different times and places converge, the result is a mosaic of emotions and insights that mirror the complexities of a self in time.
With echoes of Chekhov, Olga Tokarczuk, and Jennifer Egan, this collection transcends the boundaries of traditional storytelling, offering a glimpse into the workings of human relationships, inheritance, and experience.
Featured in Quill and Quire's fall preview
One of The Globe and Mail's books to read this season
Featured in CBC's list of Canadian Books We Can't Wait to Read This Septemberand CBC Short Story Prizewinners and Finalists Publishing Books in 2024
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