256 pages paperback
Finished books available
US: Harcourt Brace, Aug 2003
Canada: Penguin, Spring 2002
Holland: Gottmer Becht
(Photo: Courtesy of the author)
While travelling through the kingdom of Tonga in July 1997, Kevin Armstrong was hired as first mate aboard the eighty-foot sailing yacht Wendy Lynne. In the ensuing fifteen months he visited nine countries and sailed fourteen thousand kilometres. The stories in Night Watch are products of this journey. One of them, “The Cane Field”, two prizes and was selected for the 2001 Journey Prize Anthology. “The First Motion of Love” was selected for Best Canadian Short Stories 2001.
Forthcoming from Kevin Armstrong – A Good Photo: A Novel (Penguin Canada)
stories by Kevin Armstrong
CANADA'S NEW YOUNG JOSEPH CONRAD SAILS INTO THE DARKNESS OF THE PACIFIC
- A Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year, 2002
- Winner of the 2001 Journey Prize
Night Watch brings together tales from exotic locales all over the Pacific Ocean. Each narrative, like each country, has its own distinct signature and voice, but the protagonists are all attempting to find a place in an oppressive social environment.
“Night Watch” focuses on shipboard sexual politics and melodramatics that are impossible to escape. “Angel Falls” depicts a healer lured away from home to save a dying man, who finds in the end that it is he himself who is dying. “The Cane Field” is set amidst the political and economic struggles between indigenous Fijians and third-generation East Indians. “Hunga Pass” is the story of a fakeleiti, a Tongan boy raised as a girl. “Drowning in Air” tells the tale of a young Ponapé carver caught between divine inspiration and control of his own creative path. “The Legend of Kuop” is a mythological retelling of the creation of Truk Lagoon.
PRAISE FOR NIGHT WATCH
“Armstrong brings a deep sympathy and a cool, appraising eye. His prose is keenly visual and lyrical, as it steers a course between sidewinding suggestion and stark epiphany. Repeatedly, he gives you the sense of entering and understanding an unfamiliar world, bit by bit, as though he were saying: Here's that picture-postcard vista you asked for and here, by the way, is what's behind it.” — THE SEATTLE TIMES
“Sharply told, without glamour or sighing soundtracks ... [Armstrong's] measured perspective and cool eye cast the South Seas in a new light.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“The author depicts a world at once enchanted and decrepit. … Exotic without being voyeuristic, Armstrong's stories provide an unusual perspective into a distant and beleaguered world.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Whether he sets a story in Venezuela, New Zealand, or the Strait of Georgia, Armstrong has less interest in showing us the obligatory sights of the place than in exposing unfortunate human foibles in foreign contexts. ... [Armstrong's] talent at weaving strange scenery with vignettes of intense human striving has produced a collection of stories whose images are often disquieting, occasionally ludicrous, and altogether memorable.” — THE VANCOUVER SUN
“[Armstrong’s] debut collection, Night Watch, is a collection of eight short short stories based on his own journeys. They’re not your average seafaring yarns, but vivid stories about personal explorations, power, love, and betrayal that will stir the armchair Ishmael within.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL