Books

New Release: Just Once, No More

In his poignant memoir, Charles Foran presents a portrait of his gruff-but-fond father wrestling with the end of life as Charlie acts as witness, solace, and would-be guide while facing his own mortality. What story can we tell ourselves and those we love, this radiant book asks, to withstand the inevitable mutability of time and…

Planet Lolita

On the remote Hong Kong beach where they are camping, bickering parents and their lonely teenage daughter awaken at sunrise to a strange sight: a dozen women suddenly on the shore. They seem to have washed in from the sea. Fifteen-year-old Sarah, known as Xixi, tries befriending them, and she snaps a cell phone image…

Maurice Richard

Born in 1921 into a working-class family, Maurice Richard came of age as a French Canadian and athlete during an era when the majority population of Quebec slumbered. A proud, reticent man, Richard aspired only to score goals and win championships for the Montreal Canadiens. But he represented far more than an explosive forward who…

Mordecai: The Life and Times

Charlie’s biography of Mordecai Richler was published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada in October, 2010. It is the first major biography with access to family letters and archives: the definitive, detailed, intimate portrait of Mordecai Richler, the lion of Canadian literature, and the turbulent, changing times that nurtured him. It is also an extraordinary love story…

Join The Revolution, Comrade

In Join the Revolution, Comrade, Charles Foran brings to the essay form the same restlessness and originality that marks his novels and non-fiction. Foran visits places in Vietnam that have been ‘colonized’ by western war films, talks to Shanghai residents about their colossal city and commiserates with the people of Bali about the effects of terrorist…

Carolan’s Farewell

Based on the life of Terence Carolan, a legendary blind composer and harper who travelled the 18th-century Irish countryside, Carolan’s Farewell is gifted writer Charles Foran’s most luminous—and mischievous—novel yet. It is 1737, and the ailing Carolan, having completed an arduous pilgrimage, is returning home across a famine-ravaged Ireland. By his side is Owen Connor, his faithful…

House On Fire

Dominic Wilson, president of WilCor Communications, Hong Kong, is in the process of not being arrested for unspecified crimes he didn’t commit. Detained in the remote city of Bon in the last frontier of a remote Asian country known as Gyatso, Dominic remembers a quote from a tourist guide: The imagination of Gyatso is infinite.…

The Story of my life (so far)

In 1971, ten-year-old Charlie Foran handed in a Grade Five writing project called The Story of My Life (so far). In this revised and expanded version of that early effort, award-winning author Charles Foran relates the story of his boyhood, told from a boy’s perspective. Dropped squarely into the soul and psyche of a child—a…

Butterfly Lovers

Butterfly Lovers is the story of David, divorced Montrealer at odds with everyone in his life, who has one chance to re-invent himself in post-Tiananmen Beijing. David’s story is a triumph of beautifully assured narrative, moving effortlessly between the vividly drawn locales of Montreal and Beijing and between past and present. A dozen different voices…

The Last House Of Ulster

In the 1970s, Charles Foran met the McNallys, a Catholic family living in Belfast. Many years and many trips later, Foran came to see their home as a window onto the often violent and volatile world of Northern Ireland. First published to great acclaim in 1995, The Last House of Ulster continues to resonate with…

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