The long-anticipated, stunning new novel by esteemed author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, whose last novel, Noopiming, was a Canadian bestseller and shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award.

An Impossible Blue is told over the course of six months from the points of view of several different characters, each of whom is navigating their way through grief over the death of Akiwenzii—a central person in each of their lives—alongside the challenges of our present historical moment. Here is a gorgeously written, emotionally affecting, genre-bending novel that explores Nishnaabe webs of social structure—and shows how several different perspectives or truths, seen through the prism of grief, blend to make a larger understanding.
    Of An Impossible Blue, Dionne Brand, Editorial Director of Alchemy, writes: “The stories blend myth and the contemporary and try to make a way for their protagonists to live beside and within both. They search for the synergy within worlds, how to live in the contemporary world, the attempt to retrieve the self foreclosed in/and by the contemporary. The work is both narrative and philosophical, and the structure is neither linear nor explanatory, but revelatory.”
    Here is a rare novel that combines tremendous beauty in the prose with Nishnaabe humour and a generous, expansive spirit in the face of pain and devastation. The voice of each unforgettable character echoes in and through all other voices, creating a work that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

The stunning new novel by esteemed author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, whose last novel, Noopiming, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award.

An Impossible Blue opens with the beginning of mourning: cherished Nishnaabe elder Akiwenzii has died, and his dear friend Moss is inconsolable. Akiwenzii was her scaffolding in the world, and now she must remake herself and her place in this bewildering present moment. In startling, beautiful, unvarnished prose, An Impossible Blue traces the eventful year that follows the old one's death. Moss moves internally from profound disbelief to a tender hope for renewal, while in the external world she travels across landscapes and waterways, remembering Akiwenzii's legacy of storytelling and care. Meanwhile, in a parallel journey, Akiwenzii spends the year grieving his own earthbound existence and remaking his life in the sky-world.
    An Impossible Blue bends genres, blends myth with the contemporary, and traces Nishnaabe webs of social structure to build a layered meditation on grief. But this is also a novel about renewal, hard-won and hopeful, for both Moss and Akiwenzii, as it shows the re-worlding that arises for these characters and their community in the aftermath of pain and devastation. A brilliant work by one of our most talented writers, the novel seamlessly weaves narrative skill with philosophical depth to bring us a story that is at once generous, expansive, and revelatory.