Description

Winner of CBC Canada Reads 2010
Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation

Intricately plotted and shimmering with originality, Nikolski charts the curious and unexpected courses of personal migration, and shows how they just might eventually lead us to home.

Spring 1989. Three young people leave their far-flung birthplaces to follow their personal songs of migration. Each ends up in Montreal, each on a voyage of self-discovery, dealing with the mishaps of hearbreak and the twisted brances of their shared family tree.

With humour, charm and the sure touch of a born storyteller, Nicolas Dickner crafts a tale that shows the surprising links between garbage-obsessed archaeologists, pirates past and present, earthquake victims, sea snakes, several very large tuna fish, an illiterate deep-sea diver, a Commodore 64, a mysterious book with no cover and a broken compass whose needle obstinately points to the Aleutian village of Nikolski.