Rich and Poor

Finalist for the 2016 Quebec Writers’ Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction

The Globe 100: Best Books of 2016 Selection

Quill & Quire Spring 2016 Preview Selection

49th Shelf Most Anticipated Spring 2016 Fiction Selection

Big Other’s Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2016 SelectionWho hasn’t, at one time or another, considered killing a billionaire?

Following on the critical success of his novel Polyamorous Love Song (BookThug, 2014; finalist for the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and one of The Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2014), Canadian writer and performer Jacob Wren picks up the mantle of the politically and economically disenfranchised in Rich and Poor–the story of a middle-class, immigrant pianist who has fallen on hard times, and now finds himself washing dishes to make ends meet.

Wren capably balances personal reflections with real-time political events, as his protagonist awakens to the possibility of a solution to his troubles and begins to formulate a plan of attack, in which the only answer is to get rid of “the 1%.”

Rich and Poor is rare work of literary fiction that cuts into the psychology of politics in ways that are off-kilter, unexpected, and unnerving. In drawing comparisons to fiction that focuses on “the personal as political” (including Chris Kraus’s Summer of Hate and Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives), Rich and Poor is a compelling, fast-paced, and energizing read for adventure-seeking, politically active and/or interested readers who rowdily question their position among “the 99%.”

AUTHOR

Jacob Wren

JACOB WREN makes literature, performances and exhibitions. His books include: Unrehearsed Beauty, Families Are Formed Through Copulation, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed, and Polyamorous Love Song (a finalist for the 2013 Fence Modern Prize in Prose and one of the Globe and Mail‘s 100 best books of 2014). His most recent book Rich and Poor, was a finalist for the 2016 Quebec Writers’ Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created the performances: En francais comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize, Individualism Was A Mistake, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information and Every Song I’ve Ever Written. He travels internationally with alarming frequency and frequently writes about contemporary art.

Reviews

“Rich and Poor is a populist parable for our polarized times.”—Montreal Gazette

“Stoic yet provocative, Rich and Poor plunges the reader into a deep psychology of activism, politics, business, and how they all mesh together.” —Largehearted Boy

“The dream of a Marxist revolution is alive and well in Rich and Poor.”—The Winnipeg Review

“Wren’s new novel, Rich and Poor, is more than a critique of capitalism and profit-obsessed society. It’s a parable examining corporate culture – the way it makes us calculating, unscrupulous and ultimately disposable.”—The Toronto Star

“Rich and Poor is a timely and well-considered story. There are plenty of surprising moments….as well as real insights into issues of wealth inequality that so often dominate the headlines.”—Quill and Quire

“As with Wren’s previous work, Rich and Poor is art in resistance, a work that dares to remind us of our capacity for revolutionary love despite the prevailing economic system’s structural violence.”—The Globe and Mail

“Neither Job Shadowing [by Malcolm Sutton] nor Rich and Poor can be described as realistic works of fiction, and yet at the same time both are directly concerned with some of the most pressing and talked-about social issues of our time: the widening gap between an economic elite and everyone else, and the generational conflict between older haves and younger have-nots.”—Canadian Notes and Queries