Deafening Read Around the World

When asked to contemplate the idea of our new Modern Classic editions, Kathyrn Wardropper, our key account rep for Southwestern Ontario, had this amazing story to share about Frances Itani’s Deafening. A few years ago, after completing their undergrad degrees, my two sons went backpacking through Europe together. Paperback books weighed down those backpacks. Their adventures began in France at the battlefields of Normandy where they both completed reading Frances Itani’s Deafening. They left their copy behind at their hostel to be discovered by another reader, never expecting to see that book again. How wrong they were! It reappeared, scruffy and well read, in Rome in the possession of a young English student who had picked it up at another hostel in Zurich, Switzerland. They held a mini book club and discussed the many merits of this great Canadian novel. The story didn’t end here. Broke and weary, my sons reached the end of their travels on a beach in Portugal where life was cheap. They stretched out the days until their airline tickets would return them to Canada. A young American woman was on that same beach engrossed in reading an extremely tattered copy of Deafening. Incredibly, it was the same copy the boys had brought from Canada. This moving and intelligent book deserves to take its place now as a Perennial Modern Classic.