A taut, masterful novel of friends and enemies, family and fate, and the relative nature of freedom.

When Myrden returns to his tough St. John’s neighbourhood after fourteen years in prison, he is swarmed by old friends and enemies, and a wife who hasn’t exactly been waiting for him. A cruel twist of fate has made Myrden famous: any wrongfully accused man released after such a lengthy incarceration is soon to be rich.

He clings to his young granddaughter and an old love, hoping his coming settlement can free them from the cycles of revenge and failure that have marked his life. But old scores are not so easily left unsettled.

Written in abrupt prose that brilliantly reflects Myrden’s cautious evaluation of everyone and everything in the overwhelming outside world, Inside pulls the reader forward with the quiet, creeping gravity of Greek tragedy. It is a story about the best kind of friend, the life a man can’t believe he deserves and the value of trying, no matter how doomed he seems to fail, to bring hope into the lives of those still worth loving.

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NOMINEE 2006 - Scotiabank Giller Prize
WINNER 2006 - Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

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Winner of the Winterset Award.

Named a best book of the year by The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Talking Books (CBC Radio), Canwest News Service, Ottawa Xpress, National Post, Amazon.ca and Quill & Quire.

"Why had I never heard of this phenomenal Newfoundland writer? . . . What can be done about this ignorance? Nothing, save to shout Harvey's name from the rooftops and tell you to buy this book. Inside is MARVELLOUS, STRANGE, BEAUTIFUL, SAD . . . always utterly potent. There is no other writer like him, Canadian or otherwise."
–The Globe and Mail

"Compassionate, endlessly inventive and daring, [Inside] is manifestly the work of a major writer, and one who single-handedly shifts our literary centre of gravity to the east."
–National Post

"Inside is the kind of novel that brings temporary life back to such clichés as 'gripping' and 'page-turner' . . . . There is no small irony in the fact that the emotionally blunted Myrden will probably stand as one of the more vivid and full-blooded characters of all the Canadian novels being published this year."
–Toronto Star

"Newfoundland writer Kenneth J. Harvey's latest novel Inside is a potent, at times punishing, prose masterstroke. It further cements Harvey's renown as one of Canada's most dynamic and daring writers. . . . Inside is a visceral, muscular and timely tale."
–Ottawa Xpress

"Powerful and tragic. . . . A well-crafted tale of a man struggling to find redemption."
–The Works (UK)

"Inside is a gripping, moving story, and a strong follow-up to Harvey's The Town That Forgot How To Breathe, and Shack, a short story collection. . . . A great book and a real achievement."
—The Telegram (St. John's)

"There is an insistent, angry edge here that is unsettling and yet exhilarating, perhaps because we have all felt it. Inside feels like 12 rounds in the ring. Readers will emerge battered, but somehow invigorated."
—Quill & Quire

"A tough, unrelenting novel, thrilling and darkly eloquent and, in the end, a celebration of what life offers in even the harshest of circumstances."
—John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea

"Edgy, redemptive and utterly compelling."
—Sandra Martin, Elle Canada

Praise for Shack: Short Stories (2004):
"Kenneth J. Harvey’s star is rising. . . . His writing is so darkly, massively powerful that it will likely sweep all his potential competitors away with inexorable, tidal force."
—The Globe and Mail

Praise for The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (2003):
"An eerie and gripping story, the work of an extravagantly haunted imagination."
—J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize-winning author of Disgrace


From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Visit Kenneth J. Harvey's Website

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Kenneth J. Harvey’s books are published in the US, the UK, Russia, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, France and Japan. His novel The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (Raincoast) garnered raves and will appear this fall in the US from St. Martin’s Press. In Canada, it won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Harvey’s works have also been nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He lives with his family in a Newfoundland outport.

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