Shortlisted for the 2011 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Nominee
Longlisted for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award
Clark Blaise's brilliantly imagined The Meagre Tarmac is a novel in
short-story form, warmly intimate, startling in its quick jumps and
revelations, a portrait of individuals for whom we come to care deeply -
and a portrait of an Indo-American way of life that shimmers before our
eyes with the rich and compelling detail for which Clark Blaise's
fiction is renowned .... The Meagre Tarmac is a remarkable
accomplishment.--Joyce Carol Oates
An Indo-American Canterbury Tales, The Meagre Tarmac explores the
places where tradition, innovation, culture, and power meet with
explosive force. It begins with Vivek Waldekar, who refused to attend
his father's funeral because he was "trying to please an American girl
who thought starting a fire in his father's body too gross a sacrilege
to contemplate." It ends with Pranab Dasgupta, the Rockefeller of India,
who can only describe himself as "'a very lonely, very rich, very guilty
immigrant.'" And in between is a cluster of remarkable characters,
incensed by the conflict between personal desire and responsibility, who
exhaust themselves in pursuit of the miraculous. Fearless and
ferociously intelligent, these stories are vintage Blaise, whose
outsider's view of the changing heart of America has always been
ruthless and moving and tender.
