DOG: A FABLE

A strange and wondrous chronicle of the human-canine bond.

Under a hard winter moon thousands of years ago, a young wolf is separated from his pack. He takes refuge with a tribe of humans, newcomers to the valley, and begins to grow closer to them as they help each other survive. The story of the human-canine bond is well-known and well-told but rarely from that young Wolf's point of view. Many would be surprised to hear what he has to say about all his long years living alongside us. From the award-winning author of The Book of Rain, DOG: A Fable is a lyrical, gleefully genre-bending fairy tale starring Wolf, who reincarnates through the ages from the time he first meets humans to Ancient Egypt to Alexandrian Greece to the rise of Buddhism all the way to a dark future beset by climate change. DOG unleashes contemporary pets from clichéd notions of them and their place in our world. (Or our place in theirs?) No sentimental shaggy dog story, DOG explores the many manifestations of canines across the world, and it isn't always pretty. They were here before us, and will probably be here after we are gone. Dancing across genre and culture, space and time, Thomas Wharton gives a unique take on the history of dogs and humans, giving the lives and voices of dogs a gravity and independent drive rarely seen before. Thomas Wharton has been published in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Italy, Japan, and other countries. His first novel, Icefields, won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean and was also a 2008 CBC Canada Reads pick. His next book, Salamander, was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General's Award for Fiction and was also a finalist for the Roger's Writers' Trust Fiction Prize the same year. In 2006, Wharton's collection of stories, The Logogryph, was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Thomas currently lives near Edmonton, Alberta.