Who will win the $100K Scotiabank Giller Prize? Five books on 2018 shortlist revealed

The ScotiabankGiller Prize, a$100,000 literary award given to the year's best work of Canadian fiction,has revealed its five-book shortlist, including 2011 winnerEsiEdugyan forWashington Blackand past finalist Patrick deWitt forFrench Exit.

Thea Lim is also on the shortlist for her novelAnOcean of Minutes,along withEric Dupont forSongs of the Cold of Heart, which wastranslated from French by Peter McCambridge, and Sheila Heti forMotherhood.

The shortlistwas selected by a jury that is comprised of Canadian writers KamalAl-Solaylee and Heather O'Neill, Toronto International Film Festival executive Maxine Bailey,English novelist Philip Hensher and American writer John Freeman.

The winnerwill be announced at the Scotiabank Giller Prize Gala on Nov. 19, 2018.

The show will be hosted by comedian Rick Mercer and broadcast on CBC television at 8 p.m. local time (12:30 a.m. AT/1:00 a.m. NT).

CBC Radio One will broadcast a special presentation featuringThe Next Chapter host Shelagh Rogers and q books columnist JaelRichardson at 8 p.m.(9 p.m. AT/9:30 p.m. NT).

CBC Books will also stream the broadcast online at CBCbooks.caat8 p.m. ET.

The 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner was Michael Redhill for the novelBellevue Square.

Keep reading to learn more about each of the books.

French Exitby Patrick deWitt

Patrick deWitt's tragicomic novel follows the fates of Frances Price and her son Malcolm, who live in aristocratic elegance in New York. When their vast fortuneruns out, the pair head to Paris with their cat Small Frank, whom Frances believes is her dead husband. deWitt, a novelist in Portland, Ore., by way of Vancouver Island, was previously shortlisted for the ScotiabankGiller Prize in 2011 for The Sisters Brothers and longlisted in 2015 for Undermajordomo Minor.

From the jury:"A'tragedy of manners'about people out of sync in the world, this novel is disconcertingly funny. It strikes postures where a more conventional writer would have been sincere and humourless. Its subjects are effrontery, wealth, death and bad manners. Many of the greatest novels are about nothing so very important, and they last because they are done beautifully.French Exitshows Patrick deWitt's literary mastery and perfect ear. It's an immaculate performance on ice, executed with sharp shining blades, lutzing and pirouetting above unknowable black depths."

• Patrick deWitt talks about his latest novel, French Exit, and the film adaptation of The Sisters Brothers

Songs for the Cold of Heartby Eric Dupont, translated by Peter McCambridge

Billed as a "big fat whopper of a tall tale," Montreal writerEricDupont's fourth novel traverses time and spacewith comedic ease. FromRivire-du-Loup in 1919 to Nagasaki, 1990s Berlin, Romeand beyond,Dupont'swinding tale is carried by a cast of idiosyncratic characters as they contendwith the worldly events of the last century. At 604 pages, Dupont'sepic novel has the distinction of being the longest book on this year's shortlist.Dupontis also a formerCombat deslivreswinner, Radio-Canada's version ofCanada Reads, forthe bookLa Logeuse.

From the jury:"Once upon a time in Quebec there was a girl named Madeleine. A tiny red headed waif with only a suitcase in her possession steps off a train in a frozen village, and a strapping Quebec man falls head over heels in love with her strangeness. A baby is born from this union that is so big, it manages to kill both its parents in childbirth. As magnificent a work of irony and magic as the boldest works of GabrielGarca Mrquez, but with a wholly original sensibility that captures the marvellous obsessions of the Quebecois zeitgeist of the 20th century. It is without a doubt, a tour de force. And the translation is as exquisite as a snowflake."

Washington Blackby Esi Edugyan

Victoria, B.C.-basedwriterEsiEdugyan's third novel,Washington Black, followsan 11-year-old boy known as "Wash" who is enslaved on a Barbados sugar plantation. His master is Englishman Christopher Wilde, who is obsessed with developing a machine that can fly. When a man is killed, Wilde must choose between his family and saving Black's life and the choice results in an epic adventure around the world for Wash. The novel is also currentlyshortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Edugyan won the ScotiabankGiller Prize in 2011 forHalf-Blood Blues.

From the jury: "How often history asks us to underestimate those trapped there. This remarkable novel imagines what happens when a Black man escape history's inevitable clasp in his case, in a hot air balloon no less.Washington Black,the hero of Esi Edugyan's novel is born in the 1800s in Barbados with a quick mind, curious eye and a yearning for adventure. In Black's vivid and complex world as cruel empires begin to crumble and the frontiers of science open like astounding vistas Edugyan has written a supremely engrossing novel about friendship and love and the way identity is sometimes a far more vital act of imagination than the age in which one lives."

• Esi Edugyan's latest is the high-stakes historical fiction novel Washington Black

Motherhoodby Sheila Heti

The unnamed narrator ofSheilaHeti'sMotherhoodspends the novel preoccupied with a single question: should she have children? Searching for a satisfying answer, whether it ultimately be 'yes' or 'no,' the narrator consults her partner, her family and her body, breakingdown the philosophical underpinnings ofmotherhood. Heti has written eight books of fiction and nonfiction, includingHow Should a Person Be?,and lives in Toronto.

From the jury: "A personal story, a feminist debate, a philosophical reflection on time, genealogy and Art these are just some of the narrative strands that Sheila Heti weaves intoMotherhood,a complex and defiant exploration of contemporary womanhood. As her narrator interrogates the spaces between motherhood and childlessness, other paths, emerge, including the possibilities of fiction itself. In her playful but precise prose, Hetiturns interiority into an expansive landscape with life-altering implications for her narrator and anyone with an interest in the paradoxes of choice and the randomness of free will."

• Why Sheila Heti explores the question of motherhood in her new novel

An Ocean of Minutesby Thea Lim

When adeadly flu ripsthrough America, Polly Nader makes a drastic decision in order to save her partner Frank. A company called TimeRaiser agrees to pay for life-saving treatment if Polly time travels 12 years into the future, where she can be reunited with Frankand work as a bonded labourer. But Polly is accidentally sent 17 years into a future where Frank is nowhere to be found.

From the jury: "InAn Ocean of Minutes, Thea Lim asks the reader to confront contemporary issues social class, immigration, citizenship, corporate power, poverty and the all too familiar, love and loss. The novel is beautifully written and guides us through a plot that moves backwards and forward yet, never lets us go."

• Thea Lim wanted to write about grief and ended up with a time travelling love story