Canada Reads Winners

Canada Reads is an annual "battle of the books" competition organized and broadcast by the CBC.

Updated April 29, 2024
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Something fierce : memoirs of a revolutionary daughter
Aguirre, Carmen
Paper Book
A Canada Reads 2012: True Stories Contender and long-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. A gripping, darkly comic first-hand account of a young underground revolutionary during the Pinochet dictatorship in 1980s Chile. On September 11, 1973, a violent coup...
Fifteen dogs : an apologue
Alexis, André
Paper Book
An utterly convincing and moving look at the beauty and perils of consciousness. WINNER OF CANADA READS 2017 WINNER OF THE 2015 GILLER PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2015 ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2015 TORONTO BOOK AWARDS -- I wonder, said...
Next episode
Aquin, Hubert
Paper Book
First published in l965, Hubert Aquin’s Next Episode is a disturbing and yet deeply moving novel of dissent and distress. As he awaits trial, a young separatist writes an espionage story in the psychiatric ward of the Montreal prison where he has been detained. Sheila Fischman’s...
Prochain Episode
Aquin, Hubert
Paper Book
Ducks : two years in the oil sands
Beaton, Kate
Paper Book
A New York Times Notable book! One of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2022! Winner of Canada Reads 2023! "An exceptionally beautiful book about loneliness, labor, and survival."--Carmen Maria Machado Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times...
Dans le grand cercle du monde : roman
Boyden, Joseph
Paper Book
The orenda
Boyden, Joseph
Paper Book
A visceral portrait of life at a crossroads, The Orenda opens with a brutal massacre and the kidnapping of the young Iroquois Snow Falls, a spirited girl with a special gift. Her captor, Bird, is an elder and one of the Huron Nation's great warriors and statesmen. It has been years since the murder...
Rockbound: Penguin Modern Classics Edition
Day, Frank Parker
Paper Book
The timeless novel of Nova Scotia's South Shore A dreamy, optimistic, and youthful David Jung comes to claim his small share of the harsh domain of Rockbound, an island currently governed by the righteous and rapacious Uriah Jung. As David tries to find his way in a narrow and...
Nikolski
Dickner, Nicolas
Paper Book
Three young people, born thousands of miles apart, each cut themselves adrift from their birthplaces and set out to discover what - or who - might anchor them in their lives.
Nikolski : a novel
Dickner, Nicolas
Paper Book
Knopf Canada's newest Face of Fiction is Nicolas Dickner, author of a critically lauded, award-winning literary sensation in Quebec, a bestseller when published in 2005. Get ready for the joyride that is Nikolski. One cannot say it enough: this book is the discovery of the year. . . . The humour is...
By chance alone : a remarkable true story of courage and survival at Auschwitz
Eisen, Max.
Paper Book
WINNER of CBC Canada Reads Finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize In the tradition of Elie Wiesel's Night and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz comes a bestselling new memoir by Canadian survivor More than 70 years after the Nazi camps were liberated by the Allies, a new...
The best laid plans : a novel
Fallis, Terry.
Paper Book
WINNER OF CBC CANADA READS WINNER OF THE STEPHEN LEACOCK MEDAL FOR HUMOUR Here's the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election--but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock--an...
Environnement toxique
Fačy, Bernard
Paper Book
Cin petits indiens : roman
Good, Michelle
Paper Book
Five little Indians
Good, Michelle
Paper Book
WINNER: Canada Reads 2022 WINNER: Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction WINNER: Amazon First Novel Award WINNER: Kobo Emerging Author Prize  Finalist: Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalist: Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Prize Finalist: BC & Yukon...
We have always been here : a queer Muslim memoir
Habib, Samra
Paper Book
Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. The men in her life wanted to police her, the women had only shown her the example of pious obedience, and her body was a problem to be solved. A triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, We Have...
Lullabies for Little Criminals
Heather O'Neill
Paper Book
Aminata: Roman
Hill, Lawrence
Paper Book
The book of negroes
Hill, Lawrence
Paper Book
Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle--a string of slaves-- Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and...
The illegal : a novel
Hill, Lawrence
Paper Book
Keita Ali is on the run. Like every boy on the mountainous island of Zantoroland, running is all Keita's ever wanted to do. In one of the poorest nations in the world, running means respect. Running means riches-until Keita is targeted for his father's outspoken political views and...
The future
Leroux, Catherine
Paper Book
Winner of Canada Reads 2024 * Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction * One of Tor.com's Can't Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 * Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 * One of 20 Books You Heard about on CBC Last Week * One of Kirkus Reviews' Fall 2023 Big Books...
L'avenir
Leroux, Catherine, 1979-
Paper Book
February
Moore, Lisa Lynne
Paper Book
Winner of Canada Reads 2013 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O'Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal,...
Février
Moore, Lisa Lynne
Paper Book
Lullabies for little criminals : a novel
O'Neill, Heather
Paper Book
"A beautiful book, all the more remarkable because its harrowing tale is (virtuosically) told without a trace of self-pity or bathos. There are phrases in here that will make you laugh out loud, and others that will stop your heart. A definite triumph." -- David Rakoff, author of ...
In the skin of a lion : a novel
Ondaatje, Michael
Paper Book
In the Skin of a Lion is a love story and an irresistible mystery set in the turbulent, muscular new world of Toronto in the 20s and 30s. Michael Ondaatje entwines adventure, romance and history, real and invented, enmeshing us in the lives of the immigrants who built the city and those who...
King Leary
Quarrington, Paul.
Paper Book
Percival Leary was once the King of the Ice, one of hockey's greatest heroes. In the South Grouse Nursing Home, where he shares a room with Edmund Blue Hermann, the antagonistic and alcoholic newspaper reporter who once chronicled his career, learly looks back on his tumultuous life and times: his...
Forgiveness : a gift from my grandparents
Sakamoto, Mark
Paper Book
When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean traded his quiet yet troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada for the ravages of war overseas. On the other side of the country, Mitsue Sakamoto and her family felt their pleasant life in Vancouver starting to fade away after the...
Ru
Thúy, Kim.
Paper Book
At ten years old, Kim Thuy fled Vietnam on a boat with her family, leaving behind a grand house and the many less tangible riches of their home country: the ponds of lotus blossoms, the songs of soup-vendors. The family arrived in Quebec, where they found clothes at the flea market, and...
Ru
Thúy, Kim.
Paper Book
Ru. In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow--of tears, blood, money. Kim Thúy's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the flow of a life on the tides of unrest and on to more peaceful waters. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp...
A complicated kindness : a novel
Toews, Miriam
Paper Book
Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City's East Village. Instead she's trapped in East Village, Manitoba, a small town whose population is Mennonite: "the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you're a teenager." East Village...
Drôle de Tendresse
Toews, Miriam
Paper Book
The last crossing
Vanderhaeghe, Guy
Paper Book
Set in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the American and Canadian West and in Victorian England, The Last Crossing is a sweeping tale of interwoven lives and stories Charles and Addington Gaunt must find their brother Simon, who has gone missing in the wilds of the...
Jonny Appleseed
Whitehead, Joshua (Writer)
Paper Book
Jonny Appleseed : a novel
Whitehead, Joshua (Writer)
Paper Book
WINNER, Lambda Literary Award "You're gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine" is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling novel. Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and...

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