The Shadow Boxer

TORONTO,CANADA: Knopf Canada, 2000. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. As New/As New. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. First Edition; First Printing. Tight bright book.First Canadian printing (complete number line). Pages are unmarked and firm in binding.; Steven Heighton is already recognized as one of the best writers to come to the fore in the nineties, a winner of numerous literary awards, whose work is widely translated. In The Shadow Boxer, he delivers a stunning portrait of the artist in the tradition of such great tales as Jude the Obscure, Candide and even Don Quixote, and gives literary life to the Northern Ontario landscape of "the Soo", and the demanding, muscular life of Lake Superior where giant ore-barges make their way over the grave of The Edmund Fitzgerald. Intricately patterned and multi-layered, this is the story of Sevigne Torrins, poet and boxer, who sets off into the world to make it, and whose romantic and professional misadventures take him as far as Egypt before he finds his way back to the Great Lakes. But the classic writerly dream that Sevigne pursues turns out in practice to have a different and darker reality than any he had foreseen.A passionate love story, a gripping narrative, The Shadow Boxer is also about the power of dreams and regret. It heralds a major new Canadian novelist and a master storyteller.