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Recognition for “probably the single most awarded book of any genre in the history of Canadian literature. ” (The Globe and Mail, November 15, 2011)
Winner, 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction
Jury citation: Mordecai: The Life & Times by Charles Foran is biography as high art, illuminating not only the character of Canada’s most provocative writer, but also, in the most vivid and compelling fashion, the times and places in which he lived. This is a grand, sweeping work that sets the standard for future literary biography.
Winner, 2011 Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust for Literary Non-Fiction
Jury citation: Charles Foran’s biography Mordecai is an epic work of scholarship and energy, capturing the career and life of the Montreal writer Mordecai Richler with a majesty that doesn’t betray the wit and sincerity of Canada’s most famous literary contrarian. Mordecai delivers an authentic portrait of a writer who could be both tragic and gut-bustingly funny in the same sentence. It’s a big book, inclusive, intelligent, and sometimes sad, framing the era, the communities, and the life of a man who could be mordant and comic, yet laced with the underlying perfume of tragedy. Charles Foran never wears his research on his sleeve, easing it near-invisibly into the web of this great life. Mordecai is well written, exciting to read, even-handed, and magisterial.
Winner, 2011 Canadian Jewish Book Award
Jury citation: A decade after his death at 70, Mordecai Richler has found the biographer he deserves. The jury declared that Charles Foran has written the definitive biography – generous, thoroughly researched, psychologically nuanced, highly readable. They lauded him for uncovering the demons that drove Richler to create. Foran shows how the novelist’s gritty early life in working-class Jewish Montreal and his experience as a child born of a poisoned marriage shaped his prickly personality, which remained unchanged throughout his life. Foran skillfully contrasts Richler, the tender father and husband, with the hard-drinking Richler who made people angry and uncomfortable. He reveals Richler as deeply moral, using his sharp wit to expose snobbery, hypocrisy, inauthenticity, lies, anti-Semitism, and cant of all kinds.
Winner, 2011 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction
Jury citation: MORDECAI: THE LIFE AND TIMES meets the immense challenge of writing about one of Canada’s most talented and controversial authors. Charles Foran has created a rich and compelling portrait of the man and his times.
Finalist, 2011, BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction
Finalist, 2011 CBA Libris Award Non-Fiction Book of the Year
OTHER NEWS
Recent Q&A with CBC.ca
http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2011/11/charles-foran-takes-the-laferriere-questionnaire.html
Recent Q&A with Toronto Review of Books
http://www.torontoreviewofbooks.com/2011/10/a-trb-qa-with-charles-foran-author-of-mordecai-the-life-and-times/
Sept 7, 2011 ‘Mordecai Richler: The Last of the Wild Jews,’ co-written by Charles Foran and Francine Pelletier, wins the Gemini Award for Best biography documentary.
From The Globe and Mail review (Nov 18, 2010):
Made by Montreal journalist and filmmaker Francine Pelletier (who co-wrote it with Richler biographer Charles Foran), this is a very lively look at Richler’s life and work. What makes it more interesting than your average TV bio is the context in which Richler is placed – he’s presented to us as a figure of his time, when, worldwide, a group of Jewish writers rebelled and criticized their own community and pretty much everything around them. The framework is successful and it means that we get less than we’d expect of the polite praise and clichés about a famous writer who is no longer living. Also, it turns out, there is a lot of Richler footage from many TV programs – chat shows and profiles that allow Richler to speak for himself. Some people recall only the public persona of Richler as curmudgeon, but this program aims to offer a much more nuanced portrait, and it succeeds. A parade of Canadian literary figures turn up, of course, and offer not just tributes and worship, but insight too. Mind you, it is his widow, Florence, who talks most revealingly about the man.