Scandal at the Alphorn Factory

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Scandal at the Alphorn Factory

A new collection of stories by Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Gary Barwin that puts the fab in fabulist.

Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction, 2024–1984 couples brand new and uncollected stories with selections of the most playful and ambitious of Barwin’s previous collections, including Cruelty to Fabulous Animals, Big Red Baby, Doctor Weep and Other Strange Teeth, and I, Dr. Greenblatt, Orthodontist, 251–1457.

Barwin’s prose kicks against short fiction’s more traditional forms: these are pieces that flirt with poetry and playwriting. Whole stories—and worlds—are packed into single compact paragraphs. There are narrators and fleas and lists and imperatives and Hitler’s moustache and radiant happiness.

AUTHOR

Gary Barwin

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer and multidisciplinary artist and the author of 26 books including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was long-listed for Canada Reads.

A PhD in music composition, Barwin has been Writer-in-Residence at University of Toronto (Scarborough), Laurier, Western University, McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library, Hillfield Strathallan College, Sheridan College and Young Voices E-Writer-in-Residence at the Toronto Public Library. He has taught creative writing at a number of colleges and universities, to at-risk youth in Hamilton through the ArtForms program and currently mentors through the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. His writing has been published in hundreds of magazines and journals internationally and his writing, music, media works and visuals have been presented and broadcast internationally. Though born in Northern Ireland to South African parents of Ashenazi descent, Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Reviews

Barwin is known as a gifted humourist and teller of magical fantastical tales that fully immerse readers in dreamlike worlds and explorations of the human condition and those skills are on full display in this tome of magnificent collected worksOpen Book

Barwins surrealism combines Chagallian levitation with Wallace Stevenss supreme fiction as he puzzles puzzles Clockwise counterclockwise and otherwise Barwins page turns itself and turns itself orchestrating each instrument through comedy and lyrical longingThe Seabord Review

The mystery of life is not explained here but it is revealed in symphonies of mind expansion Take the journey through Barwins black hole youll be amazed by what youll findThe Miramichi Reader

Scandal at the Alphorn Factory is a 40year love affair with language where the absurd morphs into the soundest logic and the playful duels the profound Daring in form Barwins work harmonizes his signature wit with imagery that is striking gorgeous and strange Engaging imaginatively with the natural world the body the family the futureevery story is a surprise A kaleidoscopic collection that affirms Barwins place among our Canadian literary treasuresAnuja Varghese author of Chrysalis

Is Gary Barwin the Meryl Streep of Canadian Literature Or the Stephen Curry By which I mean what range These stories sound the depths of character plot style and form with irreverent humour musical language and boundless curiosity So maybe hes our Jacques Cousteauif the guy had stayed home traded his submarine for a laptop computer and made up stories about all the things he didnt knowPasha Malla author of All You Can Kill

For over four decades now in between childrens birthday parties dog walks and phatic conversations with neighbours Gary Barwin has been sending emergency communiqusin the form of allegories parables tall tales and street jokesfrom the family hearth in Hamilton Ontario He is a maestro of the suburban surreal reinscribing the liberated and liberating aesthetics of the marvellous with an ethics of care Our punny chimerical ventriloquial dummy Barwin speaks out from the head of Kafka heart of luard and soul of EdsonAlessandro Porco editor of For It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe