What We Talk About When We Talk About War

An Amazon.ca Editors’ Pick for 2012 and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2012

Shortlisted, Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction, John W. Dafoe Book Prize, and Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

Longlisted, Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction

In the last decade, Canada’s operative myth of a peacekeeping nation has been replaced by that of a “warrior” nation. With it, the idea of the Canadian soldier as peacekeeper has been transformed into the Canadian solider as confident and able war-maker.

In this provocative book, an expanded version his Antonine Maillet-Northrop Frye Lecture, Noah Richler examines how the narrative used by those in politics and the media has evolved from the complex structure of the novel to an epic narrative form. This form and the associated jargon (victory, defeat, heroes, sacrifice) have populated public pronouncements and media coverage, resulting in a re-interpretation of past events. Our changing narrative about war speaks volumes about our collective consciousness and where we place ourselves as a nation as we enter, sustain, discuss, and ultimately justify our participation in war.