Overview

"Reaching Mithymna describes the Syrian refugee crisis from a Canadian volunteer's perspective. Secondary theme of the search for identity, familial and ethnic or cultural: Heighton's mother emigrated from Greece. Will appeal to politically-minded readers interested in current events, readers of memoir, first-generation North Americans, readers interested in diaspora narratives, readers interested in the intersections of poetry and protest/political action (cf Carolyn Forche's poetry of witness.) Content comps include Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Theresa Thornhill's Hara Hotel (Verso; pb not yet released), Kate Evans' Threads, graphic nonfiction on the refugee situation at Calais. (Verso; no pb), Roberta Gately's Footprints in the Dust (about Africa and her decades working as a nurse there) Heighton is a highly regarded novelist, short story writer, and poet. His novel Afterlands was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a ""best of year"" selection in ten publications in Canada, the USA, and the UK, and has been optioned for film by Pall Grimsson and is in pre-production. Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep, a book of fiction about refugees set in Cyprus, was praised by Annie Proulx (""This book won't let the reader sleep... a rich and disturbing literary thriller"") and received a starred review in Library Journal. NYT review and Granta excerpt are expected."

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9781771963763

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Reviews

Praise for Steven Heighton [A] brilliant storyteller ... [His] exquisite, powerful meditations on who we are place Heighton among the great Canadian writers ... His focus is contemporary, but he is a practitioner of the old school, a writer for those who love to read widely and deeply. --Donna Bailey Nurse, Literary Review of Canada In scintillating prose and with masterly control of his plot and characters, poet and novelist Heighton (Afterlands) weaves a spellbinding tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal. This timely (press reports indicate that reunification talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders are advancing) novel is highly recommended to all readers. --Edward B. Cone, Library Journal (starred review) As this fascinating ... well-plotted novel draws to a tense conclusion, Heighton skillfully knits together the difficult history and politics of the region, military machinations, and the nuanced inner lives and relationships of Elias and the villagers. --Publishers Weekly [An] elegantly crafted tale of a young poet and boxer who fights his way out of the backwoods of Canada, drunk on Kerouac and the unbounded promise of his future. Heighton chronicles [his characters'] growth with impressive restraint and sensitivity... [and] ably captures the emotional costs of a young man's dream. --Washington Post Vivid and powerfully drawn ... The Shadow Boxer is an energetic, fluent and interesting novel by a writer who has already shown himself to be gifted, capable of exploring and experimenting with language. --Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

Steven Heighton's most recent books are The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep, a novel that has just been optioned for film, and The Waking Comes Late, which received the 2016 Governor General's Award for Poetry. His work has received four gold National Magazine Awards and has appeared in Granta, Tin House, Zoetrope, London Review of Books, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Poetry, TLR, and five editions of Best Canadian Stories. His novel Afterlands was cited on year-end lists in the USA, the UK, and Canada, and is in pre-production for film. In 2020 he will publish two books, a nonfiction account of the Middle Eastern refugee influx on Lesvos, Greece, and a children's book drawing on the same events. Heighton is also a translator, an occasional teacher, and a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review.

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