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A collection of essays that are at once personal and political, covering a variety of topics, ranging from the author's tumultuous relationship with his criminal father and the ways writing can help us transform our own understanding to long-form journalistic dispatches from around the globe.
About the author
Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of
Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book);
Of Bonobos and Men (Grand Prize winner of the Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism);
Cures for Hunger, a memoir about his bank robber father (selected as one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); and
Into the Sun (Midwest Book Award for literary fiction, selected by CBC Radio Canada as one of 2017's Incontournables and one of the most important books of the year to be read by Canada's political leaders);
Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation, an epistolary book of young-adult non-fiction co-authored with Innu poet Natasha Kanapé Fontaine;
White, a novel exploring the legacy of colonialism and the impact of neocolonialism in the Congo and in Canada; and
A Song from Faraway, a short-story collection forthcoming in 2020.
He has reported from India, Cuba, Rwanda, Colombia, Iraq, the Congo, and Afghanistan. He has been a finalist for a Canadian National Magazine Award and has been featured in Best Canadian Essays 2017, and his photojournalism has been exhibited in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
Summary
My Favourite Crime ranges across the world and over a wide array of contemporary issues. Divided into five sections, all united by a recurring consideration of how writing helps transform our understanding of our family, of ourselves, and of the world, the book addresses such disparate topics as: the author’s tumultuous relationship with his father, exploring his struggle to make sense of his father’s criminality as well as his own, and the temptation to lapse back into crime when one has been raised with it; the illuminated gospels on Patmos, the Greek island where Saint John composed the Book of Revelation and where refugees are locked up without food or water; an American soldier transitioning between genders while serving in Afghanistan; children accused of sorcery and exorcised in Kinshasa’s revival churches; and Indian women’s responses to their country’s rampant rape culture. Including articles about Cuba, Colombia, Iraq, Rwanda, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Québec, and the United States, My Favourite Crime is current, engaged, compelling writing not to be missed.
