Syringa Format: TradePaperback

From Syringa Vulgaris, or the lilac tree exploding into life only to expire in its prime, Syringa is a literary thriller set on New Year's Eve in Berlin where the labyrinthine story of a decades-long love affair is retold by an ex-journalist as he awaits his own assassination. The doomed couple’s only living link is an AWOL German soldier named Hissel, hired to kill three people connected to the woman’s disappearance, but his own disappearance months earlier becomes the missing puzzle piece as the clock ticks down to each character's fateful moments of atonement and brutal revenge.

Known for weirdly seductive, sharply rendered prose which has earned him comparisons to Michael Ondaatje and Leonard Cohen, Ian Orti was born and raised in Canada by immigrant parents from Ireland and Ecuador. He is the author of The Olive and the Dawn, and L (and things come apart) and his work has been published in journals and magazines across the United States, Canada, and Europe in English, French, and German. He is the recipient of multiple grants and small awards including a CBC bookclub award and the award for ‘Best Book’ at Expozine in Montreal in 2009. He currently lives in Berlin.