New Canadian Library S. Series

In The Diviners, Morag Gunn, a middle aged writer who lives in a farmhouse on the Canadian prairie, struggles to understand the loneliness of her eighteen-year-old daughter. With unusual wit and depth, Morag recognizes that she needs solitude and work as much as she needs the love of her family. With an afterword by Margaret Atwood.

Mrs. Laurence's [novel] is both poetic and muscular, and her heroine is certainly one of the more humane, unglorified, unpolemical, believable women to have appeared in recent fiction.--The New Yorker

A Bird in the House

by Laurence and Margaret Laurence

Published 1 January 1900

A Bird in the House is a series of eight interconnected short stories narrated by Vanessa MacLeod as she matures from a child at age ten into a young woman at age twenty. Wise for her years, Vanessa reveals much about the adult world in which she lives.

Vanessa rebels against the dominance of age; she watches [her grandfather] imitate her aunt Edna; and her rage at times is such that she would gladly kick him. It takes great skill to keep this story within the expanding horizon of this young girl and yet make it so revealing of the adult world.--Atlantic

A Bird in the House achieves the breadth of scope which we usually associate with the novel (and thereby is as psychologically valid as a good novel), and at the same time uses the techniques of the short story form to reveal the different aspects of the young Vanessa. --Kent Thompson, The Fiddlehead

I am haunted by the women in Laurence's novels as if they really were alive--and not as women I've known, but as women I've been.--Joan Larkin, Ms. Magazine

Not since . . . To Kill a Mockingbird has there been a novel like this. It should not be missed by anyone who has a child or was a child.--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

One of Canada's most accomplished writers, Margaret Laurence (1926-87) was the recipient of many awards including Canada's prestigious Governor General's Literary Award on two separate occasions, once for The Diviners.

Prophet's Camel Bell

by Margaret Laurence

Published 30 June 1991

When Margaret Laurence set out for Somaliland with her engineer husband in 1950, she confronted the difficulty of communication between peoples of vastly different cultures. Yet she came to know the skilled orators, poets and craftsmen of the country, and to share the vision of a people’s struggle for survival in a barren land.

The Prophet’s Camel Bell is part travelogue, part autobiography, part celebration of human nature, and essential reading for anyone who has ever been a stranger in a strange land.

This Side Jordan

by Laurence and Margaret Laurence

Published December 1960

In 1957, the British colony of the Gold Coast broke free to become the independent nation of Ghana. Margaret Laurence’s first novel, This Side Jordan, recreates that colour-drenched world: a place where men and women struggle with self-betrayal, self-discovery, and the dawning of political pride.

This Side Jordan transcends the traditional limits of the first novel. Its powerful and compassionate characterizations and its themes of exile and community anticipate the five later novels that make up Laurence’s acclaimed Manawaka series. A major work of lasting significance, This Side Jordan creates echoes in the mind of the reader as resonant as the drums of Ghana.

The Tomorrow-Tamer

by Margaret Laurence

Published 31 December 1991

The ten stories gathered together in The Tomorrow-Tamer are Margaret Laurence’s first published fiction. Set in raucous and often terrifying Ghana, where shiny Jaguars and modern jazz jostle for eminence against fetish figures, tribal rites, and the unchanging beat of jungle drums, the stories tell of individuals, European and African, trying to come to terms with the frightening world brought about by the country’s new freedom.

With the same compassion and understanding she would bring to her later fiction set in Canada, Laurence succeeds brilliantly in capturing the atmosphere of a continent and of individual men and women struggling for survival under the impact of the wind of change.