The Floating Field

On the island of Koh Panyee, in a village built on stilts, there is no open space. How will a group of Thai boys play soccer? After watching the World Cup on television, a group of Thai boys is inspired to form their own team. But on the island of Koh Panyee, in a village built on stilts, there is no open space. The boys can play only twice a month on a sandbar when the tide is low enough. Everything changes when the teens join together to build their very own floating soccer field. This inspiring true story by debut author Scott Riley is gorgeously illustrated by Nguyen Quang and Kim Lien. Perfect for fans of stories about sports, beating seemingly impossible odds, and places and cultures not often shown in picture books. "A compelling book for football [soccer] fans and readers seeking examples of ingenuity."—starred, Publishers Weekly

From the prize-winning author of The Electrical Field comes Citizen Kane reimagined: a novel about ambition and the relentless desire to belong. Shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards. Frankie Hanesaka isn't afraid of a little hard work. An industrious boy, if haunted by the mysterious figures of his mother's past in Japan, he grows up in a floating house in the harbour of Port Alberni, BC. With all the Japanese bachelors passing through town to work in the logging camps and lumber mills, maybe he could build a hotel on the water, too. Make a few dollars. But then the war comes, and Frankie finds himself in a mountai n internment camp, his small dreams of success dashed by the great tides of history. After the war, Frankie tries his luck in Toronto, where possibility awaits in the form of a patron who teaches him how to turn effort into money, and a starry-eyed architect who teaches Frankie something harder to come by: the ability to dream big. Buckminster Fuller's role as Frankie's outsized spiritual mentor is one of just many real-life touchstones and extraordinary points of colour in this fairytale-like story about family, ambition and the costs of turning our backs on history and home.

2021 DANUTA GLEED LITERARY AWARD — RUNNER-UP Caught between cultures, immigrant families from a Bengali neighbourhood in Toronto strive to navigate their home, relationships, and happiness. Set in both Canada and Bangladesh, the eight stories in Home of the Floating Lily follow the lives of everyday people as they navigate the complexities of migration, displacement, love, friendship, and familial conflict. A young woman moves to Toronto after getting married but soon discovers her husband is not who she believes him to be. A mother reconciles her heartbreak when her sons defy her expectations and choose their own paths in life. A lonely international student returns to Bangladesh and forms an unexpected bond with her domestic helper. A working-class woman, caught between her love for Bangladesh and her determination to raise her daughter in Canada, makes a life-altering decision after a dark secret from the past is revealed. In each of the stories, characters embark on difficult journeys in search of love, dignity, and a sense of belonging.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the "floating world"—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

From Ashima Shiraishi, one of the world's youngest and most skilled climbers, comes a true story of strength and perseverance--in rock climbing and in life. To a rock climber, a boulder is called a "problem," and you solve it by climbing to the top. There are twists and turns, falls and scrapes, and obstacles that seem insurmountable until you learn to see the possibilities within them. And then there is the moment of triumph, when there's nothing above you but sky and nothing below but a goal achieved. Ashima Shiraishi draws on her experience as a world-class climber in this story that challenges readers to tackle the problems in their own lives and rise to greater heights than they would have ever thought possible.

Hugo has one goal - to conquer the Impossible Thing. At the edge of the forest stood the Impossible Thing. All the animals in the forest often wondered what was beyond the Impossible Thing, but since everyone said getting through it would be impossible, no animal ever tried. Until a brave little dog named Hugo decides he just might be up to the challenge. With determination and some unexpected help from his friends, Hugo learns that what may seem impossible might just be possible after all.

“Seven perfect short stories” from the award-winning author of Antarctica—“a writer who is instinctively cherished and praised” (The Guardian, UK). Claire Keegan’s brilliant debut collection, Antarctica, was named a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year and earned her resounding accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. She continues her outstanding work with this new collection of quietly wrenching stories of despair and desire in modern-day Ireland. In “The Long and Painful Death,” a writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Böll’s old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder whose ulterior motives emerge as the night progresses. In the title story, a priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage—and battles his memories of a love affair that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life. And in “Dark Horses,” a man seeks solace at the bottom of a bottle as he mourns both his empty life and his lost love. A masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past and of individuals struggling toward their futures, Walk the Blue Fields is a breathtaking collection from “that rarest of writers—someone I will always want to read,” and a resounding articulation of all the yearnings of the human heart (Irish Times).

"A Floating Chinaman is, in the broadest sense, a book about who gets to speak for China. The title is taken from a lost manuscript by H.T. Tsiang, an eccentric Chinese immigrant writer who self-published a series of visionary novels in the 1930s, a time when China was recast as a rich, unexplored mystery to the American public. At this time the United States "rediscovered" China, and the book traces its causes and cues in a variety of sites: the comfortable, middlebrow literature of Pearl Buck, Alice Tisdale Hobart and Lin Yutang; the journalism of Carl Crow and Henry Luce; exuberant reports from oil executives proclaiming a new era in global trade. On the margins--in Chinatowns, on college campuses, in the failed avant-gardism of Tsiang--a different conversation about the possibilities of a transpacific future was taking place. The book is about the circulation of ideas about China; but it is also a book about writers, rivalries, and the acquisition of authority. It is about the creation and refinement of those ideas, as well as the spirit of competition that underlies all critical endeavors. These were decades when China represented a new area of inquiry, and the stakes for writers to flex their expertise were at once intellectual, professional, and deeply personal. The author considers a range of texts--from best-sellers to self-published paperbacks, travel literature to corporate newsletters, FBI surveillance files to flowery letters from an Ellis Island detention center--and considers the competing notions of a transpacific future that animated the literary imagination as well as some satisfying moments of revenge."--Provided by publisher.