A very Toronto novel: Michael Redhill on his Giller Prize win

Toronto author Michael Redhill took home the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize last night for Bellevue Square, a novel the prize jury declared full of “complex literary wonders.”

One of five very different nominated titles—“apples and oranges” Redhill said afterwards, “and passion fruits and pomegranates” — Bellevue Square is also a very Toronto novel.

The main character, a bookshop owner in the city’s Kensington Market area, is a relative newcomer to Toronto, and still trying to get a grip on its “deep well of weirdness.”

Within a CanLit that is developing powerful bodies of regional writing, Redhill’s hometown may be “having its moment,” says Redhill, 51.

Writers are “intensely rooted in their places, including this city — which has changed so much in our lifetimes—and they’re no longer shy about championing it.”