Five Wives is a novel by Joan Thomas , published in 2019 by Harper Avenue. Based on the real-life Operation Auca , in which five Christian missionaries were murdered when they attempted to contact the isolated Huaorani people in Ecuador , the novel centres on the perspective of the men's wives.
19-567: Russell Smith of The Globe and Mail praised the novel, calling Thomas one of Canada's most underrated writers and ultimately concluding that the novel was comparable to the work of Alice Munro . The novel won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 2019 Governor General's Awards . This article about a Canadian novel is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See guidelines for writing about novels . Further suggestions might be found on
38-445: A non-fiction work may prove inaccurate, the sincere author aims to be truthful at the time of composition. A non-fiction account is an exercise in accurately representing a topic, and remains distinct from any implied endorsement. The numerous narrative techniques used within fiction are generally thought inappropriate for use in non-fiction. They are still present particularly in older works, but are often muted so as not to overshadow
57-553: A weekly column on the arts for The Globe and Mail . On resigning from the column, Smith published an article in The Walrus reflecting on his departure as a mixture of quick-digest writing, lack of editorial support, and a cut-throat business model. The discontinuation of the column was lamented by The Walrus letters to the editor. Smith throughout bis career expressed a profound interest in Canadian English . He
76-479: Is also possible. Some fiction may include non-fictional elements; semi-fiction is fiction implementing a great deal of non-fiction, (such as a fictional description based on a true story). Some non-fiction may include elements of unverified supposition , deduction , or imagination for the purpose of smoothing out a narrative , but the inclusion of open falsehoods would discredit it as a work of non-fiction. The publishing and bookselling businesses sometimes use
95-695: Is largely populated by imaginary characters and events. Non-fiction writers can show the reasons and consequences of events, they can compare, contrast, classify, categorise and summarise information, put the facts in a logical or chronological order, infer and reach conclusions about facts, etc. They can use graphic, structural and printed appearance features such as pictures , graphs or charts , diagrams , flowcharts , summaries , glossaries , sidebars , timelines , table of contents , headings , subheadings , bolded or italicised words, footnotes , maps , indices , labels , captions , etc. to help readers find information. While specific claims in
114-715: The University of Poitiers , and the University of Paris III . He has an MA in French from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. As a freelance reporter and cultural commentator, he has published in the New York Review of Books, Details, The Walrus,Toronto Life, Flare, Now, EnRoute and other journals. He won the William Allen White award for magazine writing in 1995. From 1999 to 2020, Smith wrote
133-482: The real world , rather than being grounded in imagination . Non-fiction typically aims to present topics objectively based on historical, scientific, and empirical information. However, some non-fiction ranges into more subjective territory, including sincerely held opinions on real-world topics. Often referring specifically to prose writing, non-fiction is one of the two fundamental approaches to story and storytelling , in contrast to narrative fiction , which
152-486: The Blink of an Eye is available as an e-book . In 2018, Smith compiled and edited the anthology Best Canadian Stories 2018 ( Biblioasis ). In 2020, Smith translated Quebec novelist Nadine Bismuth 's novel Un Lien Familial , as A Family Affair ( Anansi ). Non-fiction Non-fiction (or nonfiction ) is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith , to convey information only about
171-534: The Whiskheads , an allegory about the role of art in a metropolis. The illustrations were by Wesley Bates. His pornographic novel, Diana: A Diary in the Second Person (2003), was published by Gutter Press under the pseudonym Diane Savage. The novel was republished, under his own name, with a new introduction, by Biblioasis in 2008. Muriella Pent (2004) is a longer and more ambitious novel, concerning
190-487: The arrival of a Caribbean writer of mixed race in the stodgy environment of official Canadian culture. It was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize , and named as Best Fiction of 2004 by Amazon.ca. His novel Girl Crazy was published by HarperCollins Canada in 2010. His short story collection, Confidence , was published in 2015, and was longlisted for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize . One of
209-679: The article's talk page . Russell Smith (writer) Russell Claude Smith (born August 2, 1963 in Johannesburg , South Africa) is a Canadian writer and newspaper columnist. Smith's novels and short stories are mostly set in Toronto, where he lives. Smith grew up in Halifax , Nova Scotia . He attended the Halifax Grammar School and Queen Elizabeth High School , and studied French literature at Queen's University ,
SECTION 10
#1732787450597228-455: The boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are continually blurred and argued upon, especially in the field of biography ; as Virginia Woolf said: "if we think of truth as something of granite-like solidity and of personality as something of rainbow-like intangibility and reflect that the aim of biography is to weld these two into one seamless whole, we shall admit that the problem is a stiff one and that we need not wonder if biographers, for
247-412: The information within the work. Simplicity, clarity, and directness are some of the most important considerations when producing non-fiction. Audience is important in any artistic or descriptive endeavour, but it is perhaps most important in non-fiction. In fiction, the writer believes that readers will make an effort to follow and interpret an indirectly or abstractly presented progression of theme, whereas
266-406: The most part failed to solve it." Including information that the author knows to be untrue within such works is usually regarded as dishonest. Still, certain kinds of written works can legitimately be either fiction or non-fiction, such as journals of self-expression, letters , magazine articles, and other expressions of imagination. Though they are mostly either one or the other, a blend of both
285-478: The phrase " literary non-fiction " to distinguish works with a more literary or intellectual bent, as opposed to the bulk of non-fiction subjects. Based on the author's intention or the purpose of the content, the main genres of non-fiction are instructional, explanatory, discussion-based, report-based (non-chronological), opinion-based (persuasive) and relating (chronological recounting) non-fiction. Non-fictional works of these different genres can be created with
304-415: The production of non-fiction has more to do with the direct provision of information. Understanding of the potential readers' use for the work and their existing knowledge of a subject are both fundamental for effective non-fiction. Despite the claim to truth of non-fiction, it is often necessary to persuade the reader to agree with the ideas and so a balanced, coherent, and informed argument is vital. However,
323-606: The sexual mores of young people. How Insensitive was nominated for the Governor General's Award , at that time the most prestigious Canadian literary prize. Noise was published in German as Glamour by List Verlag. His book of short stories, Young Men , followed in 1999. The opening story in that collection, "Party Going", won the Canadian National Magazine Award for fiction in 1997. He then published an illustrated fantasy novella, The Princess and
342-691: The stories in that collection, "Raccoons", won the Canadian National Magazine Award for fiction in that year. In 2005 Thomas Dunne Books published Smith's non-fiction book, Men's Style: The Thinking Man's Guide To Dress , which is based on his regular column on men's fashion in the Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail . The book was illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. Smith's memoir Blindsided: How Twenty Years of Writing About Booze, Drugs and Sex Ended in
361-591: Was the host of the CBC radio program on language, And Sometimes Y , for two seasons. Smith taught the Fiction Workshop in the University of Guelph 's Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing programme from 2009 to 2017. In 2019 he became an acquiring editor for Dundurn Press . His early novels, How Insensitive (1994) and Noise (1998), are satirical and comic portrayals of big-city life and
#596403