Order now. Released April 2024.
McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada.
Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize • A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year • One of Apple Canada’s Best Ebooks of 2024 • CBC Books’ Top Pick for Most Anticipated Canadian Fiction for Spring 2024
A breathtaking and sharply funny collection about the everyday trials and impossible expectations that come with being a woman, from the Governor General’s Literary Award-shortlisted author of The Most Precious Substance on Earth.
What would have happened if she’d met him at a different time in her life, when she was older, more confident, less lonely, and less afraid? She wonders not whether they would have stayed together, but whether she would have known to stay away.
A writer discovers that her ex has published a novel about their breakup.An immunocompromised woman falls in love, only to have her body betray her. After her boyfriend makes an insensitive comment, a college student finds an experimental procedure that promises to turn her brown eyes blue. A Reddit post about a man’s habit of grabbing his girlfriend’s breasts prompts a shocking confession. An unsettling second date leads to the testing of boundaries. And when a woman begins to lose her hair, she embarks on an increasingly nightmarish search for answers.
With honesty, tenderness, and a skewering wit, these stories boldly wrestle with rage, longing, illness, and bodily autonomy, and their inescapable impacts on a woman’s relationships with others and with herself.
Praise:
“The wry female characters in Death By a Thousand Cuts are so genuine and evocative, it is impossible not to empathize with them. All of Bhat’s stories possess a sharp-eyed restraint, and they will astonish and move you with their darkly glittering moments of hilarity and depth. Within these pages you will find poignancy, humour, and unflinching insight on the precarity and absurdity that is contemporary female life. Bhat is an undeniably talented storyteller and an indelible voice in modern fiction. I loved this collection!!!”
—Lindsay Wong, author of The Woo-Woo and Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality
“Death By a Thousand Cuts made me scream with laughter nearly as often as it made me scream with rage. Shashi Bhat’s distinctive, powerful collection is so raw and vivid that it feels alive. This is a piercing, absorbing, and unforgettable book.”
—Sarah Jackson, author of A Bit Much
“In these masterful stories about dating apps, consent, COVID lockdown, exes who write revenge novels, and the body, which so often betrays itself, Shashi Bhat writes scenes of contemporary life with such wit and aplomb you almost don’t realize they’ve also broken your heart. I love these stories so much.”
—Liz Harmer, author of Strange Loops
“Hot damn. Through her original stories, Shashi Bhat dissects the subtle indignities of modern womanhood with a scalpel and reassembles them into something beautiful. A thousand cuts indeed.”
—Anna Fitzpatrick, author of Good Girl
Order in Canada. Released August 24, 2021.
McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada.
Order in the US. Released June 28, 2022.
Grand Central Publishing/Hachette.
A humorous coming-of-age novel and a sharp-edged look at how silence can shape a life, from the winner of the Journey Prize. A shortlisted finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Award for fiction. A Chatelaine Summer Reads pick. Named one of the most anticipated books of the fall by CBC Books and 49th Shelf.
“But wait, what happened to the girl?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I don’t tell him that what will happen to her is what happens to every girl.
Nina, a bright, hilarious, and sensitive 14-year-old, doesn’t say anything when her best friend begins to pull away, or when her crush on her English teacher intensifies. She doesn’t say anything when her mother tries to match her up with local Halifax Indian boys unfamiliar with her Saved by the Bell references, or when her worried father starts reciting Hindu prayers outside her bedroom door. (“How can your dad be happy when his only daughter is unsettled?”)
And she won’t speak of the incident in high school that changes the course of her life.
On her tumultuous path from nineties high school student to present-day high school teacher, Nina will learn difficult truths about existing as a woman in the world. And whether she’s pushing herself to deliver speeches at Toastmasters meetings, struggling through her MFA program, enduring the indignities of online dating, or wrestling with how to best guide her students, she will discover that the past is never far behind her.
Darkly funny, deeply moving, at times unsettling and even shocking, Shashi Bhat’s irresistible novel examines the fraught relationships between those who take and those who have something taken. Rich with wry humour and sharp-edged insight, The Most Precious Substance on Earth is an unforgettable portrait of how silence can shape a life.
Praise:
“Honest, hilarious, and profoundly affecting, The Most Precious Substance on Earth is rife with moments of such emotional clarity they made me gasp, and are still ringing in my mind days later. Bhat writes with such a deep understanding of the world that by the end of the book, I felt I understood it a little better, too.”
—Amy Jones, author of Every Little Piece of Me
“A powerful, surprising and terrifying meditation on girlhood, as dark as it is funny. There is an Edward Scissorhands quality to Nina, the book’s heroine; the power and accuracy of her insight cuts those around her, but none as deeply as herself. And yet, what a pleasure it is to be cut open by the knife of Nina’s thoughts and the power of Shashi Bhat’s prose. In The Most Precious Substance on Earth, all the best punchlines do permanent damage.”
—Rufi Thorpe, author of The Knockout Queen
“With language as lovely as it is razor sharp, Shashi Bhat paints an indelible portrait of the pleasure and pain of adolescence—and the scars it leaves behind. Like the young woman at its center, this novel-in-stories has a fierce voice, a soft beauty, and a huge heart.”
—Robin Wasserman, author of Mother Daughter Widow Wife
“How refreshing to have a character as witty, as vibrant, as sensitive as Nina. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is a brilliant, laugh-out-loud funny, and dangerously good coming-of-age story that offers sharp commentary on the very real realities women and girls negotiate every single day. Come for the laughter, stay for the wisdom. Shashi Bhat has crafted something special. More than a must-read, it is a must-share.”
—Téa Mutonji, author of Shut Up You’re Pretty
“High school is a setting ready-made for drama, a fact that Shashi Bhat exploits to great effect in her glorious novel. Bhat precisely captures adolescence with all its ennui and angst, and she is a master of observation, finding humour in the quotidian. Full of wit and insight, The Most Precious Substance on Earth is a joy to read. A sheer delight.”
—Sharon Bala, author of The Boat People