Neil Bissoondath

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Neil Bissoondath Devindra (* 19th April 1955 in Arima ) is from Trinidad and Tobago originating Canadian author of novels and short stories and essayist .

Life

Origin, studies and first short stories

Bissoondath completed his education at St Mary's College in Port of Spain and emigrated to Canada in 1973, where he studied at York University in Toronto , which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1977 . He then began working as a Toronto teacher of English as a second language and French .

In the late 1970s, under the inspirational influence of his uncle VS Naipaul , Bissoondath began writing short stories and attended the Banff School of Fine Arts in 1983. His first book, the short story collection Digging Up Mountains (1985), dealt with feelings of cultural alienation, exile and domestic upheavals, and thus with topics that he also explored in his later works. The book was a commercial success and also received recognition in literary criticism , so it was possible for him to take a few years off as a teacher to devote himself full-time to writing.

Debut Novel and Canadian Multiculturalism

Most of his fictional portrayal he wrote as novels, with his debut novel A Casual Brutality appeared in 1988. The set in the fictional Caribbean - Republic playing Casaquemada novel was in 1989 for the Smith Books / Books in Canada First Novel Award nominated, but the Rick Salutin for A Man of Little Faith received. In 1990, Bissoondath published the second collection of short stories, On the Eve of Uncertain Tomorrows . The 1993 novel The Innocent of Age is the story of intergenerational tension in an increasingly racist Toronto. His novels often focus on characters who are each confronted with their own past.

Bissoondath's most controversial and best-selling book is Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (1994), a new edition published in 2002. In this book he criticized the nichtfiktiven 1971 came into force in Canadian law for multiculturalism ( Multiculturalism Act 1971 ), as this difference rather than emphasized the similarities among the numerous ethnic groups of the country. In it, he argued that multicultural policies, while well-intentioned, only encouraged the isolation and stereotyping of cultural groups.

In 1995, he moved to Québec , where he taught creative writing at Laval University . The protagonist in the Governor General's Award for Fiction novel The Worlds Within Her (1998) returned to her birthplace in the Caribbean to have her mother's ashes buried. In Doing the Heart Good (2002), an elderly English-speaking Montreal man reassesses his life after losing all of his property in an arson attack . The Unyielding Clamour of the Night (2005) is about a young teacher who leaves behind a privileged upbringing to counter political, religious and racial unrest in a fictional island state modeled on Sri Lanka .

Publications

  • Digging up the mountains , 1985
  • A casual brutality , 1988
  • On the eve of uncertain tomorrows , 1990
  • The innocence of age , 1992
  • Selling illusions , 1994
  • The worlds within her , 1998
  • Doing the heart good , 2002
  • Return to Casaquemada , 1999
  • Unyielding Clamor of the Night , 2005
  • The age of confession , 2007
  • The soul of all great designs , 2008
in German language

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ SELLING ILLUSIONS REVISED EDITION. THE CULT OF MULTI CULTURALISM IN CANADA ( Penguin Books )
  2. ^ My Review of Neil Bissoondath's Selling Illusions
  3. ↑ Hard questions. Neil Bissoondath takes on a controversial subject in his timely new novel , Quill & Quire , September 2005
personal data
SURNAME Bissoondath, Neil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bissoondath, Neil Devindra (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Arima , Trinidad