Longlisted, Scotiabank Giller Prize

Violence is the domain of both the rich and poor. Or so it seems in early 20th-century Ukraine during the tumult of the Russian Revolution.

As anarchists, Bolsheviks, and the White Army all come and go, each claiming freedom and justice, David Bergen embeds his readers into the lives of characters connected through love, family, and loyalty. Lehn, a bookseller south of Kiev, deserts the army and writes poetry to his love back home; Sablin, an adopted Mennonite-Ukrainian stableboy, runs with the anarchists only to discover that love and the planting of crops is preferable to killing; Inna, a beautiful young peasant, tries to stop a Mennonite landowner from stealing her child. In a world of violence, Sablin, Lehn, and Inna learn to love and hate and love again, hoping, against all odds, that one can turn away from the dead.

In this beautifully crafted novel, David Bergen takes us to a place where chaos reigns, where answers come from everywhere and nowhere, and where both the beauty and horror of humanity are on full display.

When Morris Schutt, a prominent newspaper columnist, surveys his life over the past year, he sees disaster everywhere. His son has just been killed in Afghanistan, and his newspaper has put him on indefinite leave; his psychiatrist wife, Lucille, seems headed for the door; he is strongly attracted to Ursula, the wife of a dairy farmer from Minnesota; and his daughter appears to be having an affair with one of her professors.

What is a thinking man to do but turn to Cicero and Plato and Socrates in search of the truth? Or better still, to call one of those discreet dating services in search of happiness? But happiness, as Morris discovers, is not that easy to find. David Bergen's most accomplished novel, The Matter with Morris, is an unforgettable story with a vitality, charm, and intelligence all its own. Bergen proves once again that he is a rare and exceptional writer, dazzling us with his wit and touching us with his compassion.

The Matter With Morris is more interested in showing that simply getting on with life is one of the best ways to counter grief, a premise it supports with quiet effectiveness.--The New York Times Book Review

A beautiful, smart, deeply moving book.--Miriam Toews, author of A Complicated Kindness

Bergen writes earnestly about dignity and duty, particularly as they apply to fatherhood and women. --Booklist

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE - A NEW YORK TIMES NEW & NOTEWORTHY BOOK - A GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 100 BOOK FOR 2020 - A CBC BEST FICTION BOOK FOR 2020 - His third appearance on the Giller shortlist ... affirms Bergen among Canada's most powerful writers. His pages light up; all around falls into darkness.--2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury - David Bergen's command is breathtaking ... His work belongs to the world, and to all time. He is one of our living greats.--Matthew Thomas, New York Times-bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves

From the streets of Danang, Vietnam, where a boy falls in with a young American missionary, to fishermen lost off the islands of Honduras, to the Canadian prairies, where a teenage boy's infatuation reveals his naiveté and an aging rancher finds himself smitten, the short stories in Here the Dark explore the spaces between doubt and belief, evil and good, obscurity and light. Following men and boys bewildered by their circumstances and swayed by desire, surprised by love and by their capacity for both tenderness and violence, and featuring a novella about a young woman who rejects the laws of her cloistered Mennonite community, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner David Bergen's latest deftly renders complex moral ambiguities and asks what it means to be lost--and how we might be found.

In a faithless world, the transitory and temporal hold the only redemptive power possible, and at their most eloquent, Bergen's stories are a lyrical evocation of this power.
--Eric Henderson, The Vancouver Sun