Days by Moonlight

Gulliver’s Travels meets The Underground Railroad: a road trip through the countryside – and the psyche – by the author of Fifteen Dogs.

Longlisted for the 2019 Giller Prize

Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip by his parents’ friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. Alfred and the Professor encounter towns where Black residents speak only in sign language and towns that hold Indigenous Parades; it is a land of house burnings, werewolves, and witches.

Complete with Alfred’s drawings of plants both real and implausible, Days by Moonlight is a Dantesque journey taken during the “hour of the wolf,” that time of day when the sun is setting and the traveller can’t tell the difference between dog and wolf. And it asks that perpetual question: how do we know the things we know are real, and what is real anyway?

“A mash-up that is part fabulism, part faux biography, and part satire, Days by Moonlight conveys the experience of grief, managing to transform its inarticulable and symbolic weight into a finely wrought literary work.” —Quill and Quire

André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. He is the author of the Quincunx, comprised of five novels: Fifteen Dogs, winner of the Giller Prize, CBC Canada Reads, and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; Days by Moonlight, winner of the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; Pastoral; The Hidden Keys; and Ring. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Asylum, The Night Piece, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, and most recently Other Worlds, longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. He is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Prize. He lives in Toronto.

André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. His novel Fifteen Dogs won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include The Hidden Keys, Pastoral (nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize), Asylum, Beauty and Sadness, Ingrid & the Wolf, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa and Lambton, Kent and Other Vistas: A Play.