Cereus Blooms at Night cover art

Cereus Blooms at Night

Penguin Modern Classics Edition

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Cereus Blooms at Night

By: Shani Mootoo
Narrated by: Shaquille James-Hosten
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About this listen

Finalist for the Giller Prize

Finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize

Bold and lyrical, sensual and highly charged, Cereus Blooms at Night is the beautifully written, sensational first novel by Shani Mootoo, one of Canada’s most exciting literary voices.

At the core of this haunting multigenerational novel are the shifting faces of Mala - adventurer and protector, recluse, and madwoman. Told by the engaging voice of Tyler, Mala’s vivacious male caretaker at the Paradise Alms House, Cereus Blooms at Night is layered with unforgettable scenes of a world where love and treachery collide.

©2009 Shani Mootoo (P)2022 McClelland & Stewart
Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Fiction

Critic Reviews

“Dazzling.... Mootoo creates a dense Asian-Caribbean world of buried secrets and desperate memories, a hothouse in which stories grow as lushly as flowers.” (Books in Canada)

“The passion of the characters, their insistence to live, to find joy despite the tyranny under which they conduct their lives, makes Cereus Blooms at Night remarkable.” (Shyam Selvadurai, author of Funny Boy)

“[Mootoo's] language and characters seduce us away to a mythic place that is, by turns, as sweet as the first knowing of love and as hard as a callous blow. Inside the grand sweep of the story are the finely tuned details which mark a brilliant storyteller.” (Jewelle Gomez)

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