Finalist for the Manitoba Book Awards’ Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First BookLonglisted for the Sunburst Award for Adult Fiction The highly anticipated debut short story collection by Journey Prize finalist Seyward Goodhand. Even That Wildest Hope bursts with vibrant, otherworldly characters—wax girls and gods-among-men, artists on opposite sides of a war, aimless plutocrats and anarchist urchins—who are sometimes wondrous, often grotesque, and always driven by passions and yearnings common to us all. Each story is an untamed territory unto itself: where characters are both victims and predators, the settings are antique and futuristic, and where our intimacies—with friends, lovers, enemies, and even our food—reveal a deeply human desire for beauty and abjection. Stylistic and primordial, Even That Wildest Hope is a chaotic and always satisfying fabulist journey in the baroque tradition of Angela Carter, Carmen Maria Machado, and Ted Chiang. “Read any sentence in this collection and you will know that Seyward Goodhand is a rare and original talent.”—David Bezmozgis “It’s a relief to find this kind of daring in Canadian fiction.”—CNQ “Seyward Goodhand can whip up a hell of a story… Yes read it.”—Lolly K Dandeneau
