Incident Report, The

: In a Toronto library, home to the mad and the marginalized, notes appear, written by someone who believes he is Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester from Verdi’s opera. Convinced that the young librarian, Miriam, is his daughter, he promises to protect her from grief. Little does he know how much loss she has already experienced; or does he? The Incident Report, both mystery and love story, daringly explores the fragility of our individual identities. Strikingly original in its structure, comprised of 140 highly distilled, lyric “reports,” the novel depicts the tensions between private and public storytelling, the subtle dynamics of a socially exposed workplace. The Incident Report is a novel of “gestures,” one that invites the reader to be astonished by the circumstances its characters confront. Reports on bizarre public behaviour intertwine with reports on the private life of the novel’s narrator. Shifting constantly between harmony and dissonance, elegant in its restraint and excitingly contemporary, The Incident Report takes the pulse of our fragmented urban existence with detachment and wit, while a quiet tragedy unfolds. Previous books, with dates and publishers:• The Shape I Gave You – Knopf 2006• Madame Balashovskaya’s Apartment - Turnstone Press 1999Translations of Madame Balashovskaya’s Apartment:An einem Regentag in Paris – Ebersbach 2001 (Germany)Madame B. titka - Kossuth 2003 (Hungary)• My Sister Esther – Turnstone Press 1995