Goya's Dog

A stunning, darkly comic consideration of love, grief, the appeal of gin, and the artist's role in times of war.

Edward Dacres is an unforgettable anti-hero, a dissolute  painter whose fortunes in London have dwindled to nothing by the autumn of 1939. When a misdirected letter invites him to take part in a delegation to bring art to the Colonies, as it were, he seizes the opportunity to leave England. Once in North America, Dacres is forced by a series of mishaps  to abandon the delegation and seek survival by any means. In the puritan climate of 1939 Toronto, however, most citizens have their thoughts on the war and don't care a whit for his painted triangles. Most, that is, with the notable exception of a beautiful heiress with an eye for art and a wilful determination to save Dacres from himself.

A love story laced with satire, a historical novel bearing on contemporary truths, a picaresque tale of cowardice, drinking and artistic paralysis, Goya's Dog is above all else an original and mesmerizing debut novel from a writer The Globe and Mail has called "a truly new voice, delivered with rare panache."