Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk by Damian Tarnopolsky

A risk-taking, labyrinthine, and absolutely original collection of short stories.

Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm a Monster offers an unfolding puzzle of the human psyche that is at once explosive, funny, dark, sweet, pained, and utterly strange. From the tangled threads of a messed-up family to the timeless themes of consciousness, love, art, and death, Damian Tarnopolsky's narrative journey takes readers through past, present, and future, with stories spanning from 1980s England to Renaissance France to present-day Canada to a world yet to come.

Each tale stands alone in its stylistic direction, only to connect and reflect back on each other in unexpected, touching, and sometimes jarring ways. As characters from different times and places converge, the result is a mosaic of emotions and insights that mirror the complexities of a self in time.

With echoes of Chekhov, Olga Tokarczuk, and Jennifer Egan, this is a collection that transcends the boundaries of traditional storytelling, offering a glimpse into the workings of human relationships, inheritance, and experience. (From Freehand Books)

• 64 works of Canadian fiction to read in fall 2024

Damian Tarnopolsky is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and teacher. His novel Goya's Dog was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Canada/Caribbean). His short fiction has appeared in The Puritan, The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, subTerrain, Audeamus, among others. Tarnopolsky has twice been nominated for the Journey Prize.

Tarnopolsky was shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize in 2007 for his story You Guys which is featured in Every Night I Dream I'm a Monk, Every Night I Dream I'm a Monster.