The Book of Rain

a novel by Thomas Wharton

FINALIST FOR THE 2023 ATWOOD GIBSON WRITER’S TRUST FICTION PRIZE

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 GEORGES BUGNET AWARD FOR FICTION

#4 ON THE BESTSELLER LIST FOR CANADIAN FICTION ITS FIRST WEEK ON SALE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 GEORGES BUGNET AWARD FOR FICTION

IN HIS FIRST ADULT NOVEL IN 20 YEARS, THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED ICEFIELDS AND SALAMANDER STUNS WITH AN EPIC TALE OF LITERARY SUSPENSE ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL CHAOS AND HOPE IN OUR TIME.

“What difference can it make to save the life of one animal?”

Executive Editor Anne Collins at Random House Canada calls this book a “hugely ambitious, multi-layered, and profound novel.”

The Book of Rain begins in the northern mining town of River Meadows, where a valuable ore’s strange properties create anomalous effects known as “decoherences” that alter reality and eventually force the evacuation of the town. From this beginning the novel follows three intertwining stories:

Alex Hewitt returns to River Meadows years later to search for his sister Amery, who has disappeared while rescuing animals that have been trapped in the restricted zone.

Claire, a young woman from River Meadows who now traffics illegal wildlife, comes to an island under threat of environmental catastrophe for what she hopes will be her greatest prize yet, only to find herself facing a life-altering choice.

In a future as distant as myth, a flock of birds sets out on a dangerous journey to prevent the extinction of their ancient enemy, humanity.

Read an excerpt

See also
thomaswharton.ca
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94,000 words
Manuscript available fall 2021

RIGHTS SOLD

Canada: Random House (March 14, 2023)
French Canada: Editions Alto, fall 2023
French ex-North America: Editions Payot & Rivages
Russia: Everbook

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK OF RAIN

“Thomas Wharton’s marvellous new novel.… The Book of Rain descends literarily from Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths”, Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.… The Book of Rain is an essential text for thinking about extinction and environmental catastrophe.” – The Literary Review of Canada

“Although the novel seems to focus thematically on humanity’s relationship with the environment, and argue for particular environmental attitudes, in truth this is a sidebar, and the real thematic focus here is the relationship between humans and other animals….. Wharton’s great strength as a writer lies in collecting all of these disparate pieces without making his story incoherent or even too coherent. At the same time, he doesn’t fall into the trap so many writers with similar themes do, and always keeps the emotional lives of his characters, rather than the novel’s thematic ideas, as the focus.” – The Winnipeg Free Press

“In The Book of Rain, award-winning author Thomas Wharton tells a riveting tale of the impact that human choices have on our world. It is an extraordinary weaving of characters and events in an all-too-plausible parallel world.” – Prairie Books Now

“It’s difficult to describe just how audaciously imaginative The Book of Rain is. Thomas Wharton has crafted a world parallel to this one yet not, an epic of consuming scope. This is more than climate fiction for climate fiction’s sake: with beautiful literary control, Wharton ventures into the wilds, and in doing so presents a stunning excavation of how fragile, fleeting and many-faced it is to be human. I wish more books surprised me as much as this one did.” —Omar El Akkad, author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning What Strange Paradise and American War

“The Book of Rain ripples through reality, giving us a new vocabulary for the strange and dangerous world we find ourselves in. A subtle and haunting journey through the intertwined lives of three characters at the end of the world, Wharton’s unflinching eye and soaring imagination turn a perilous journey wondrous.”
 —Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach and Son of a Trickster

“Thomas Wharton's novel has a prismatic effect: a reader can see rainbow refractions of Strugatsky, Joan Lindsay, Jeff Vandermeer, even Lovecraft—but The Book of Rain is unique enough to exist beyond comparison. It’s a book of rich characterizations and bold ideas, the kind of high-wire act many writers shy away from. The fact that Wharton pulls it off is a kind of miracle.”
 —Craig Davidson, author of Rust and Bone and The Saturday Night Ghost Club

(Photo: Mary Sperle)

ABOUT THOMAS WHARTON

Thomas Wharton has been published in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Italy, Japan, and other countries. His first novel, Icefields, won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean and was also a 2008 CBC Canada Reads pick. His next book, Salamander, was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor-General’s Award for Fiction and was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. In 2006, Wharton's collection of stories, The Logogryph, was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.
Thomas currently lives near Edmonton, Alberta.

#4 on the bestseller list for Canadian fiction its first week on sale.

PRAISE FOR THE WORKS OF THOMAS WHARTON

ICEFIELDS

“Ice, when it is touched, can sear the flesh; in Icefields, it fires the imagination.”
 — PEOPLE MAGAZINE

“Careful dialogue, a steady pace and cool, subtle prose.”
 — NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“Wharton has ably captured the turn-of-the-century feel of rural Canada, complete with boosterism, a Vicotiran adventuress and teahouses in the wilderness.” — WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

“Icefields is a novel of crystalline beauty from a writer to watch.”
 — TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

SALAMANDER

“Wharton's style is always flexible, poetic, inventive, and always lucid.”
 — THE GUARDIAN

“A magical tale of books and riddles, castles and countesses.” — ELLE Magazine

“The sort of book every reader hopes to find, earnestly passes along to friends, and returns to in their dreams.” — NATIONAL POST

THE LOGOGRYPH

“It is a book that sends you spinning off into lovely reveries of longing and desire. It is the kind of book you will recommend to close friends and family with words like: You have to read this! You must read this book!” — EDMONTON JOURNAL

“Wharton is one of the few Canadian practitioners of experimental fiction in the vein of Borges and Calvino, and although he has yet to match his mentors, he displays a talent that may well be honed to genius…. Dear Reader, go now and find The Logogryph.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL

“A book like no other—and I mean that in the most serious and complimentary way possible. However you respond to The Logogryph, you will agree that what Wharton has accomplished is the very definition of literary invention.”
 — LOS ANGELES TIMES

Thomas on the national TV show Your Morning