Lucky
by Kathryn ParaLucky is an unflinching novel set in the Middle East and Canada. It tells the story of Anika Lund, a freelance war photographer with an ambition to photograph an infamous terrorist, and her best friend and translator, Viva, who seeks answers to the mystery of her husband’s disappearance in Syria. In the fall of 2004, they gain access to Iraqi resistance fighters, and entrance to the broken city of Fallujah, igniting a series of terrifying events that exact a price that becomes too much to bear.
Lucky explores essential questions about war photography, the price paid by journalists and the moral dilemmas of love and war.
Contributors
Kathryn Para, author
Kathryn Para is an award-winning, multi-genre writer with a MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in Grain, Room of One’s Own, Geist, Sunstream, and Vancouver Review. She is the 2013 winner of Mother Tongue Publishing's Search for the Great BC Novel Contest. Her stage play, Honey, debuted in 2004. She has also written, directed and produced short films. She lives in Gibsons, BC. Lucky is her first novel.
Reviews
- With "Lucky", Kathy Para has written a gorgeous, lyrical and globe-spanning ode to damage and to recovery, a powerful examination of the thornily entangled ethics of photography, war, love and humanity. - Micheal Christie, author of The Beggar's Garden
- Ani is a woman in pursuit of her dream – to photograph a notorious terrorist in Iraq. What could go wrong? She brings along the many prescription pills she'll need to swallow, and the ideals she'll be pressed to cough up. Author Para carves Ani's relationships – to men, to war, to her own ambitions – with hard, jagged edges. This assured novel, winner of the second Search for the Great B.C. Novel Contest, is, in more than one sense, a heart pounder. - The Tyee staff Link to review
- "Lucky", a novel by Kathryn Para goes behind the lines of war Astonishing Novel about a photojournalist's season in hell "Astonishing in scope and depth" "Astonishing as a first novel" "Para’s depictions of the war scenes in Lucky are stunning, her understanding of the political forces at play, astute; these sections ring with a profound authenticity. Yet it’s the heartbreaking, personal account of Ani that is so enlightening. We’re reading of a woman who is angry about being a “woman in a man’s mythology. - M.A.C. Farrant, Vancouver Sun Link to review
Awards
- Winner, Great BC Novel Award
- Finalist, Ethel Wilson Fiction Award, BC Book Prizes
Rights Holder
Rights Holder: Mother Tongue Publishing
email: mona@mothertonguepublishing.com
website: http://www.mothertonguepublishing.com/
rights available: World
Additional Information
number of pages: 215
publication date: 10/04/2013
Original language of pub: English
Materials Available: finished book