TOMSON HIGHWAY is best known for his Governor General's Award-nominated plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, as well as the bestselling novel Kiss of the Fur Queen. He divides his year between Gatineau, Quebec and Northern Ontario.
WINNER OF THE 2021 HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR
NONFICTION
NOMINATED FOR THE 2022 EVERGREEN AWARD
Named one of the best books of 2021 by The Globe and Mail •
Winnipeg Free Press • CBC
"Mesmerizing." —The Globe and Mail
"Exquisitely written and both hilarious and painful, Permanent
Astonishment is a testament to the power of culture, language,
family and the land." —Winnipeg Free Press
"Permanent Astonishment is a mesmerizing story rich in detail about
growing up in a Cree-speaking family in Northern Manitoba and later
in a residential school. Highway’s writing delights in tales of
eating muskrat tails, speaking Cree (and learning English),
preparing for a Christmas concert, and listening to Hank Snow on a
transistor radio. While unstinting about the abuse he and others
suffered, Highway makes a bold personal choice to accentuate the
wondrousness of his school years resulting in a book that shines
with the foundational sparks of adolescence: innocence, fear, and
amazement." —2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction
jury
"Brilliant, funny, beautiful . . . Permanent Astonishment is a
stirring, powerful account of finding joy on the upper side of
hardship and beauty in both darkness and light. Recounted in
musical English prose inflected with Cree words and concepts, it's
a vision of a vanished world and a keen insight into one of
Canada's most important writers." —Quill and Quire, starred
review
"Tomson Highway is one of Canada's most masterful magicians when it
comes to literary prose. . . . The Cree writer and playwright from
Brochet, Manitoba, conjures and evokes emotions like no other. . .
. The land, language and culture weave throughout his storytelling
of his formative years. . . . Permanent Astonishment is many
things, as much of Highway's writing tends to be. But the most
impactful is that it is a road map to what matters—a moment of
pause for any of us who languish in existential angst." —Winnipeg
Free Press
"Permanent Astonishment propels itself wholeheartedly toward joy,
whether it's the joy of the Cree language, the naughty nicknames
for friends and rivals, the white-sand beaches of Reindeer Lake, of
dances and school sporting events, of escaping harrowing near
tragedies. . . . [Highway] write[s] with so much beautiful detail
about the world that [he] was born into." —Xtra
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