Finalist for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize

Some secrets never die…

Priya and Alexandra have moved from the city to a picturesque countryside town. What Alex doesn't know is that in moving, Priya is running from her past—from a fraught relationship with an old friend, Prakash, who pursued her for many years, both online and off. Time has passed, however, and Priya, confident that her ties to Prakash have been successfully severed, decides it’s once more safe to establish an online presence. In no time, Prakash discovers Priya online and contacts her. Impulsively, inexplicably, Priya invites him to visit her and Alex in the country, without ever having come clean with Alex about their relationship—or its tumultuous end. Prakash's sudden arrival at their home reveals cracks in Priya and Alex's relationship and brings into question Priya's true intentions.

Seductive and tension-filled, Polar Vortex is a story of secrets, deceptions, and revenge. It asks readers: Are we ever free from our pasts? Do we deserve to be?

SHANI MOOTOO was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad. Her poetry books include Oh Witness Dey!, Cane | Fire, and The Predicament of Or. She is the author of several novels, including Cereus Blooms at Night, now a Penguin Modern Classic and a Vintage Classics book, and Polar Vortex, both shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Mootoo's novels have been long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Dublin Literary Award, among others. Her prose and poetry have been widely anthologized, , including in Trinidad Noir, Trinidad Noir: The Classics, and The Haunted Tropics, and her poetry has appeared in Wasafiri, Poetry Magazine, Audemas, and Room Magazine, among other magazines and journals. She has been awarded the Doctor of Letters honoris causa degree from Western University and is a recipient of Lambda Literary's James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize and the Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award. She lives in Southern Ontario, Canada.

Shani Mootoo's profile page

• Short-listed, Scotiabank Giller Prize

"Polar Vortex makes no compromises in conveying the grip of the past on its heady and sensuous cast of characters, all of whom sing their song, as if they were the frozen swans of Lake Ontario that Priya and Alex encounter thawing out after the polar vortex has finally passed." —Quill & Quire

"Compellingly charts the complexity of human relationships, the illusions of memory, and the corrosive power of denial." —Kirkus Reviews

"The emotional chill and chilling truths revealed in Shani Mootoo’s latest novel, Polar Vortex, are delivered with late at night, eyes-burning, can’t put down this book feels." —The Miramichi Reader

2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury Citation:

"A keen meditation on the complexities of identity and desire, Polar Vortex is the unsettling examination of a failing marriage. In a small, southern Ontario town, Priya impulsively invites an old suitor, Prakash, to spend the night and his arrival triggers the fault lines in her relationship with Alexandra. Conflicting wants and untold truths drag the past into the present. Memories cascade and clash as Mootoo masterfully dismantles the stories the narrators tell themselves in language as unsparing as winter."

"The writing is subtle and emotionally compelling, and the reader is left to meditate on questions of the intersections of race and culture, sexuality and desire, and the past and present." —Canadian Literature

"Mootoo’s subtle, thought-provoking tale stands out among stories of characters gripped by the past." —Publishers Weekly

"Polar Vortex becomes a book about truth and memory, about how little we know each other, and ourselves. Strange, ominous, haunting, it’s a propulsive read and a deliciously unsettling one." —Pickle Me This

"Closure can not always be found in confrontation, or with sitting in the pain, or with a long overdue argument. Polar Vortex reminds us that sometimes healing is found by simply letting go." —Open Book

"Polar Vortex is a completely delicious work by a beautiful writer. It is a perceptive examination of love, desire and the need we each have to love, and have another love us, completely for all our faults and foibles." —Parry Sound North Star

"Polar Vortex haunted me for days as have Mootoo’s other novels. Here is a writer at the full height of her power asking vital, important questions rendered beautifully through character, setting, and plot. Here is a writer demonstrating with passion and power the importance of art to understanding the world. What pleasure!" —Lambda Literary

"Shani Mootoo has done it again. She has proven that not only is she a consummate writer but that she is also a keen observer of the human psyche. She is also one of the most honest and self-aware writers that one can have the privilege of reading." —Herizons

"The heart of the story in Polar Vortex spirals around our efforts to construct and reconstruct the truth, to build and rebuild our selves, to create and sustain meaningful connections in our lives." —Buried in Print

"In merging a novel about refugees with a novel about decades of relationship tension, Mootoo has created something special that, much like its namesake, merges identity, friendship, sexuality, love, culture, race, and desire. Far from leaving readers chilled, Mootoo’s vortex will drive them on their own desperate searches through memory." ★★★★★ —Shrapnel Magazine

"Polar Vortex is an unsettling novel about how secrets always come back to get us—especially the secrets we’ve managed to keep from ourselves." —The Globe and Mail