缅北强奸

Author Charles Foran has been on a roll this year in terms of awards. (Photo by James Lahey)

Award-filled year for 缅北强奸 alumnus

Foran a nominee for Governor General鈥檚 Literary Award

As corny as it may sound, the stars seem to be aligning for writer Charles Foran this year.

To date, Foran, (a graduate of St. Michael鈥檚 College), has received the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award and the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and is nominated for a Governor General鈥檚 Literary Award for non-fiction, all  for his biography of Mordecai Richler, Mordecai: The Life & Times.

But that鈥檚 not all.

The film, Mordecai Richler: The Last of the Wild Jews, which Foran co-wrote with the film鈥檚 director Francine Pelletier, premiered on Bravo! late last year. Foran was also elected president of PEN Canada, a non-profit organization that advocates freedom of expression and works on behalf of persecuted writers around the world. 

鈥淪tars are aligning would be the verbal clich茅,鈥 said Foran. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 sense that at the beginning (he started the book project four years ago), but I certainly sensed it over the course of last year.鈥

Foran began writing as an undergraduate at U of .He published his first short story in the Grammateion, the St. Michael's College annual journal of the arts. In 1984, he received his master鈥檚 degree in Irish literature from University College, Dublin. Since then he has published 10 books and written numerous essays and reviews for publications such as The Walrus, The Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette.

Foran said he realized that he wanted to be a writer when  he was in his late teens. 鈥淢aybe from the time I began to take books very seriously; about the age of 16 or 17. 鈥淸Since then] I wasn鈥檛 intending to do anything else.鈥 

He  also has had a longstanding preoccupation with human nature. Foran started his undergraduate degree in psychology but switched to English two years later.

鈥淓ven to this day, I see a strong psychological level to writing,鈥 he said.

For Foran, studying human nature begins with observing people where they live and this precept has taken him to places as varied as Belfast, Beijing and Montreal for his work.

鈥淚鈥檓 interested in how people are embedded in their place, how their place and time defines them,鈥 said Foran. Few people are intimately linked to a place as much as Mordecai Richler; saying his name automatically conjures up Montreal.

鈥淩ichler鈥檚 work is so obviously shaped by the place,鈥 noted Foran. 鈥淗e鈥檚 the Canadian writer most closely identified with an urban landscape.鈥

It is the reason why Mordecai begins with a portrait of Montreal.

鈥淭o set him up in that Montreal was the right way to open the book,鈥 said Foran. 鈥淔or him it was quite was fraught, he rejected it all on one level and became very alienated from Jewish Montreal and his family, but never from those streets, never from those houses.鈥

A long-time admirer of Richler鈥檚 work, Foran sensed that a lot of Canadians were looking to go back to Richler and believes the film and biography have given them a chance to rediscover this 鈥渂racing, exasperating, thrilling and essential figure.鈥

 Foran said over the four years he worked on the book many people told him how they missed satire.

鈥淩ichler was the one surefire Canadian who was going to say what he thought, rip into people, he was fearless,鈥 he noted. 鈥淎s I say in the book, the relationship between Mordecai Richler and Canada was our country鈥檚 first major conversation between an individual artist and the society.鈥

Learn more about Charles Foran on his . The Governor General鈥檚 Literary Awards finalists will be announced on Nov. 15.


 

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