Olga Stein

Season's Greetings dear reader from everyone at Books in Canada.We hope the new year brings more of the delights you're accustomed to, as well as a host of new ones. Since books play such a joyful part in everyday life, we hope to continue guiding you to many of the finest works published in Canada, while keeping you in touch with scores of beloved authors from other parts of the world.

Books in Canada would like to congratulate Austin Clarke for winning this year's Giller Prize for his The Polished Hoe. Nancy Wigston has provided a timely and wonderfully written review of this book about a woman, an ex-slave, who in confessing to a murder, gives an account of brutalitiesùthat she and others in her community had been subjected toùin view of which her own crime must be understood as something inevitable, a necessary conclusion to a long chain of sorrowful antecedents.

Also to be congratulated are the following English- and French-language winners of the 2002 Governor General's Literary Awards:
For Fiction: Gloria Sawai for A Song for Nettie Johnson,
Monique LaRue for La Gloire de Cassiodore
For Poetry: Roy Micki for Surrender
Robert Dickson for Humains paysages en temps de paix relative
For Drama: Kevin Kerr for Unity (1918)
Daniel Danis for Le Langue-a-Langue des chiens de roche
For Nonficion: Andrew Nikiforuk for Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against
Big Oil
Judith Lavoie for Mark Twain et la parole noire
Children's Lit û text: Martha Brooks for True Confessions of a Heartless Girl
HTlFne Vachon for L'oiseau de passage
Children's Lit ûillust: Wallace Edwards for Alphabeasts (text by Wallace Edwards)
Luc Melanson for Le grand voyage de Monsieur
(text by Gilles Tibo)
For Translation: Nigel Spencer for Thunder and Light (by Marie-Claire Blais)
Paul Pierre-Noyart for Histoire universelle de la chastetT et du cTlibat
(by Elizabeth Abbott)

The Jan/Feb 2003 issue of Books in Canada will feature reviews of the English-language Governor General's Awards winners. French Canadian works not yet translated into English are generally not reviewed by us, but please note that Books in Canada continues to take serious interest in French-Canadian authors whose writing has been made available in English. France Daigle's A Fine Passage and Jacques Poulin's Autumn Rounds are reviewed in this issue, and in the coming year there'll be plenty more coverage of books by noteworthy French-Canadian authors.

Issue highlights? It's practically impossible to point out one or two particular items as this year-end issue is packed with superb contributions. Prairie voicesùthose of Guy Vanderhaeghe, Sharon Butala, and Warren Cariou are distinctly present in this issue. For something different, read Michael Harris' amusing, at times self-deprecating, 'field notes' on book collectingùspecifically, the works of Ted Huges. Janice Kulyk Keefer offers some intriguing tidbits about the life of Katherine Mansfield about whom she's currently writing a book. And there's so much more. Happy holiday reading!