Letter to a Distant Father

The writer of the letter in Kenneth Radu's title poem is reaching across an enormous silence: from a microchipped contemporary Canadian setting to the rest home on the Black Sea where his father is dying; and then even further, back to their lives in a peasant village before the son's escape under the wire.

Kenneth Radu has published books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction, including The Cost of Living, shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. His collection of stories A Private Performance and his novel Distant Relations both received the Quebec Writers' Federation Award for best English-language fiction. His last novel is The Purest of Human Pleasures (Penguin). He is also the author of Sex in Russia: New & Selected Stories (DC Books Canada). Born in Windsor, Ontario, he taught for many years at John Abbott College near Montreal and now writes full time.