Dominoes at the Crossroads
“The sheer torque of Dominoes at the Crossroads is a testament to Kellough’s willingness to dwell in the hurricane. The result is an urgent and inimitable collection that honours the rebels in the diaspora.
Winner of QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, 2020
Among shortlisted titles for Grand Prix du Livre du Montréal, 2020
Among longlisted titles for Scotiabank Giller Prize, 2020
Dominoes at the Crossroads maps an alternate Canada—one crisscrossed by a Caribbean diaspora seeking music, futures, and portals to their past.
In this collection of stories, Kaie Kellough’s characters navigate race, history, and coming-of-age by way of their confessions and dreams. Through the eyes of jazz musicians, hitchhikers, quiet suburbanites, student radicals, secret agents, historians, and their fugitive slave ancestors, Kellough guides us from the cobblestones of Montreal’s Old Port to the foliage of a South American rainforest, from a basement in wartime Paris to an underground antique shop in Montréal during the October Crisis, allowing the force of imagination to tip the balance of time like a line of dominoes.
Praise