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Some works of Canadian fantastic fiction directly question the nature of identity.
In Robert Charles Wilson's The Divide, John Shaw is the subject of a medical experiment to create a man with super-intelligence. Andrew Weiner's short story "The News from D Street" is a poignant study of a character whose true identity is much stranger than he, or the reader, expects.
Guy Gavriel Kay's fantasy trilogy The Fionavar Tapestry concerns characters who discover their true identities and life-roles as they become involved in the struggle between good and evil in a parallel magical world.
Maria Chapdelaine
Hémon, Louis
Boucherville, Québec: Éditions de Mortagne, 1983.
This carefully crafted account of Quebec peasant life is based on the author's experiences in the Lac Saint-Jean district. In Maria Chapdelaine, church and farm provide a physical and symbolic setting for romance, while the seasons and feast days provide the novel's framework. Today, it is regarded as an allegory for individual and collective alienation. When it was first published in 1916, it was seen as an affirmation of the traditional values of rural French Canada.
Courtesy of Éditions de Mortagne, 1983.
Dune
Herbert, Frank
Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1965.
Set in the distant future, this classic epic of the struggle between good and evil, describes how a descendant of the legendary Greek King Atheus avenges the death of his father and achieves his destiny as the ruler of the desert world, Dune.
Courtship RiteElaborate courtship rites, plural marriages and ritual cannibalism are well-established in the hostile environment of Geta, a planet where the species is more important than any individual.
The Stone AngelThe first of Margaret Laurence's acclaimed Manawaka novels presents one of the most memorable characterizations in Canadian fiction as it explores the life of the proud and irascible Hagar Shipley. Now 90, she escapes the unpleasantness of the present by retracing her past and, in so doing, comes to terms with her own mortality.
Courtesy of the University of Chicago Press.
The DivideThis intriguing story about a medical experiment to create a super-intelligent human being also explores multiple personality disorder (MPD) from a new angle and shows how profoundly relationships change the course of lives.
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Copyright. The National Library of Canada. (Revised: 1995-06-17)