Rising literary star Pasha Malla is going to be reading at Halifax Public Libraries, Saturday, Aug 24th 2:00 pm, at the Spring Garden Road Memorial Public Library.

Pasha will be reading from his debut novel People Park (M). I read this novel as an ebook earlier this summer and absolutely loved it. It is full of engaging and quirky characters, reveals a wonderfully creative writing style, and has a remarkably captivating sense of place.

Here is the publisher’s description:

People Park is a tour de force of eerily prescient, grotesque, and hilarious observation and a narrative of gripping, unrelenting suspense. Malla writes as if the twin demons of Stephen King and Flannery O’Connor were resting on his shoulders. You’ve never read anything quite like People Park. 

It’s the Silver Jubilee of People Park, an urban experiment conceived by a radical mayor and zealously policed by the testosterone-powered New Fraternal League of Men. To celebrate, the insular island city has engaged the illustrationist Raven, who promises to deliver the most astonishing spectacle its residents have ever seen. As the entire island comes together for the event, we meet an unforgettable cross-section of its inhabitants, from activists to nihilists, art stars to athletes, families to inveterate loners. Soon, however, what has promised to be a triumph of civic harmony begins to reveal its shadow side. And when Raven’s illustration exceeds even the most extreme of expectations, the island is plunged into a series of unnatural disasters that force people to confront what they are really made of.

Why do I say rising literary star? Well just checkout his impressive list of awards and nominations.

Pasha Malla’s first novel, People Park, was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and was selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book. His first collection of short stories, The Withdrawal Method, a Globe and Mail and National Post book of the year, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is the winner of an Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction, two National Magazine Awards, and has twice had stories included in the Journey Prize anthology. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.