Armin Wiebe’s latest novel, Tatsea,
is an adventure love story set in Canada’s subarctic in the 1760s.
Before that he published three comic novels in an attempt to create
legends out of the landscape of the former tall grass prairie which
may be a tall tale in itself since the largest surviving fragment
of tall grass prairie in Canada has a city address.
Wiebe’s first novel,
The Salvation of Yasch Siemens, generated a number of
book banning legends, while his second novel,
Murder in Gutenthal: A Schneppa Kjnals Mystery, foreshadowed
certain cross-border pharmaceutical commerce. In The
Second Coming of Yeeat Shpanst Wiebe tried to create
a legend out of the 1992 Charlottetown Accord Referendum even as
it was happening. He takes solace in the legend that Melville’s
Moby Dick sold a whopping 3000 copies in the first 70 years of its
existence.
Armin’s novels have been nominated
for the Books in Canada First Novel Award,
The Leacock Medal for Humour, and The
McNally Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award. His stories
have been selected for The Journey Prize Anthology
and shortlisted for the Western Magazine Awards.
"The Little Kollouch" won 1st place in the 2002
Prairie Fire Fiction contest. Tatsea
won The Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
and The McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award at the 2004
Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards.
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