The Road to Fez

Left profoundly deaf following a bout with scarlet fever, Grania O'Neill grows up at the Ontario School for the Deaf, where she spends her entire time, protected from the hearing world outside and learning sign language and speech, but her life is changed forever when she falls in love with Jim Lloyd, a hearing man, in a debut novel set on the eve of the Great War. 100,000 first printing.

Frances Itani is the author of four acclaimed short-story collections and has written stories, drama, poetry, and features for CBC Radio. She is a two-time winner of the Tilden (CBC/ Saturday Night) Literary Award, and the recipient of Canadian Fiction Magazine's Best Short Story Award. Deafening, which is being published in thirteen countries, is her American debut. The novel was written as a tribute to Itani's grandmother, who was deaf from the age of eighteen months as a result of scarlet fever. Itani divides her time between Ottawa, Canada, and Geneva, Switzerland.