"MAYBE LITERATURE BEGINS with a fall from grace. In the aftermath of this fall, we
need different questions: we don't ask why the catastrophe happened. We
diligently map the question of how. In our novels, we walk through history once
more, we walk through it many different ways and, to our sorrow, we recognize
the path is well worn.…Maybe the knowledge accrued by literature has more in
common with the wilderness. Maybe, despite our capacities for empathy and joy
and care, the instinct for cruelty never diminishes.
For me, the way forward is the private map, the private self. For as long as I can remember, I have longed to disappear, and in disappearing, into fiction or art, live with the human in myself. I would like to sit and simply consider all the things we do not categorize as ourselves, that we have cast away as sub-human. They show me that there are other ways to be alive.”
Madeleine Thien (Vancouver-based short story writer and novelist)
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