A selection of books that illuminate Canada — its landscape, history, and people.
Fiction
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence — a Manitoba novel and one of the classics of Canadian literature. Laurence's Manawaka cycle is a good entry point into prairie writing.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje — Booker Prize-winning novel from one of Canada's most celebrated writers.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel — opens in Pondicherry but the Canadian imagination is all over it. Won the Booker Prize in 2002.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood — dystopian fiction that is also a meditation on Canadian geography and American politics just over the border.
Obasan by Joy Kogawa — a quiet, devastating novel about Japanese-Canadian internment during the Second World War.
Non-Fiction and History
The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King — witty, angry, and essential on the history and present of Indigenous peoples in North America.
The Discovery of France notwithstanding, Peter Newman's multi-volume The Canadian Establishment remains the definitive portrait of English-Canadian business elites.
The Danger Tree by David Macfarlane — a family memoir about Newfoundland before and after the First World War. Beautiful writing.
Travel and Landscape
The Bush Garden by Northrop Frye — literary criticism but also a sustained meditation on Canadian identity and the concept of "garrison mentality."
Canadian Wilderness (photography) by various — many excellent photography books capture the sheer scale and variety of Canadian landscape.
Hockey
The Game by Ken Dryden — part memoir, part meditation on hockey's place in Canadian life. Still the best book about the sport.
Scotty Bowman: A Life in Hockey by Eric Duhatschek — biography of the winningest coach in NHL history.