Tiger, Tiger

• 24 works of Canadian fiction to watch for in the first half of 2018

A collection of intrepid and incisive stories from theauthor of The Sentimentalists.

Tiger, Tiger takes readers from the Paradise Valley Senior Centre parking lot all the way to Mars and examines the contradictions of life along the way. An astounding array of characters come up against the challenges of existence both mundane and extraordinary and their experiences never fail to surprise and delight.

• Johanna Skibsrudhas no faith in bestseller lists

A scientist finds the truth about love in a lab where he is learning to grow extinct tigers. A fake wedding at a nursing home brings a divorce to the brink of despair while her grandmother marvels at the beauty around her. A small-town taxidermist realizes his fiance is never returning that he has lost her to an inscrutable ball of light. A soldier survives the bloody Battle of the Argonne Forest but loses the faith of his child. An uncanny teenager holds 200,000 years of the world's history in her mind but feels desperately alone.

Profound and paradoxical, these fourteen stories bring us closer to the truth, even if we discover that it is ultimately unknowable. Masterfully crafted and astonishingly wise, Tiger, Tiger explores the limits of understanding, the future of humanity, and establishes Skibsrud as a rare and exceptional talent. (From Hamish Hamilton)

Tiger, Tiger is available in April 2018.