Fifteen Dogs: Tenth Anniversary Edition Andre Alexis 9781552455166

WINNER OF THE 2015 GILLER PRIZE

WINNER OF THE 2015 WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE

A special edition hardcover celebrating the tenth anniversary of Andre Alexis's modern masterpiece.

- I wonder, said Hermes, what it would be like if animals had human intelligence.

- I'll wager a year's servitude, answered Apollo, that animals - any animal you like - would be even more unhappy than humans are, if they were given human intelligence.

And so it begins: a bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto veterinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their newly unfamiliar world, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.

First published in 2015, Andre Alexis's contemporary take on the apologue offers an utterly compelling and affecting look at the beauty and perils of human consciousness.By turns meditative and devastating, charming and strange, Fifteen Dogs shows you can teach an old genre new tricks.

Andre Alexis is the author of Fifteen Dogs, which won the Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and Canada Reads. His other books have won or been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Trillium Book Award, the Commonwealth Prize, and the OCM Books Prize for Caribbean Literature. In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. Alexis lives in Toronto.