Wrong World

<p>Bertram Brooker won the country's first Governor General's Award for literature in 1936 for his novel Think of the Earth and his explosive experimental paintings hang in every major gallery in the country. He was Canada's first multidisciplinary avant-gardist successfully experimenting in literature visual arts film and theatre. Brooker brought all of his experimental ambitions to his short fiction and prose.</p><p></p><p>The Wrong World presents a rich sampling of his prose work much of it previously unpublished which adds new insight into his aesthetic ambitions. Working during an incredible period of transition in Canadian society Brooker's stories document Canada's evolution from a provincial colony into a modern urban country. His essays participated in that evolution by advocating a passionate awakening of the arts the end of prudish sentiment and censorship and a radical rethinking of the nature of war. They capture the limitations and hypocrisies of the Canadian social contract and argue for a more just and spiritual society. His stories humanize his social vision by dramatizing the psychological and emotional cost of Canada's transition into a modern civilization. In turn devastating penetrating and poignant Brooker's prose works offer a sharply focused window into the turbulent interwar years in Canada.</p>