New Releases by Leon Rooke

A selection of previously published short stories by Rooke, including stories from a book never distributed in Canada, "The broad back of the angel."

Backwoods North Carolinian Leon Rooke has written the all-tome tale of good and evil joined in a battle to the death. Toker and Truman are fighting over a woman called Roby and a baby--the most cunning, magical foundling ever deserted, rescued, imperiled, and pursued.

Most Canadians tend to take their politics seriously; seldom do they see politics as entertainment, as superb low comedy. How I Saved The Province invites us to laugh at ourselves. In these stories people exist in a state of impotence and paranoia. They imagine themselves surrounded by spies. Rooke''s black humour gives a new twist to the image of Big Brother. Yet while the characters live in a world that should be overwhelmingly depressing, their spirits are irrepressible and their voices irresistibly funny.

Roman over de lotgevallen van Shakespeare''s hond, die ook zo zijn pretenties heeft en zijn baas een beklagenswaardige stakker vindt.

The eighth and newest short-story collection by Leon Rooke. In A Bolt Of White Cloth Leon Rooke brings together an extraordinary array of characters in scenes and circumstances which flow easily back and forth from wild hilarity to deeply felt sorrow. The distance between dream and reality is often blurred in these finely tuned, beautifully written stories. And, as in past collections, Rooke''s characters and stories are firmly rooted in the apparently common and everyday events of the everyman in all of us. When the exceptional does occur, Rooke has the uncanny ability to make it seem the most natural thing in the world.

A tour de force of inventive wit Shakespeare''s Dog is the eccentric and high-spirited story of William Shakespeare and how he came to bed and wed Anne Hathaway. Told from the point of view of the Bard''s dog, this astonishing novel of comic bliss, hailed as a triumph of language and an amusing delight.

“Some story collections are as comfortable as plush furniture. But Leon Rooke rips the plush out of the armchairs. His fiction gleams like the chrome and glass of hi-tech.” — Quill & Quire

Also includes blank advertising contract; production biographies for "The Coal Forest" Summer 1990 tour; biography of Leon Rooke and review of his book "A Good Baby" with publicity of its production by Caravan in 1987; references, history, mandate, goals, and objectives of the Caravan Stage Company; lists of past productions, biographies.