One of the CBC’s Best Books of the Year.

A pregnancy test is taken at a wedding, a bad diagnosis leads a patient to a surprising outlook, and a civic holiday becomes a dystopian nightmare. By turns caustic, tender, and creepily hilarious, Sweet Affliction reveals the frailties, perversions, and resilience of Anna Leventhal’s cast of city-dwellers. Shiftless youths, a compulsive collector of cigarette butts, and a dying pet rat populate fifteen sharply-observed and darkly funny stories that suck at the marrow of modern life.

“It’s a joy to read.”—The Globe & Mail

"Anna Leventhal [is] one of Montreal’s quietly beloved literary personalities."—Cult MTL

“A subtle yet powerful debut.”—Inaudible

"Sweet Affliction’s reviews have been positive across the board, and rightly so. It’s a collection that reads more like a mid-career statement than a tentative debut."—Montreal Gazette

Anna Leventhal won sec­ond prize in the 2nd annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest for “Scarlets and Cubans.” She lives in Montreal, where she is active in arts and cul­ture, hav­ing worked on the local Bookmobile project and co-founded the Bibliograph/e Zine Library, among other things. Leventhal has also per­formed exper­i­men­tal col­lab­o­ra­tive the­atre pieces in New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal. She served as edi­tor of The Art of Trespassing, pub­lished September 2008 by Invisible Publishing.

Anna Leventhal's profile page

• Winner, Quebec Writers’ Federation Concordia University First Book Prize
• Short-listed, CBC's Best Books

“Sweet Affliction has the ability to make you bark with laughter, choke back sobs, and gasp in wonder, sometimes in the span of a few lines.”—Quill & Quire

“It’s a joy to read.”—The Globe & Mail

"Sweet Affliction’s reviews have been positive across the board, and rightly so. It’s a collection that reads more like a mid-career statement than a tentative debut."—Montreal Gazette

“This collection of stories is wonderful…I’m going to lend my copy to a friend to read, but I will want it back, because this is a book to read again."—Halifax Chronicle Herald

“Sweet Affliction is a book that refuses to sugarcoat the lives of its characters, offering readers the kind of glass-half-empty perspective that can be refreshing in its honesty.”—The Bull Calf Review

“Leventhal excels at dark humour.”—Montreal Review of Books

"Sweet Affliction is an insightful piece of fiction filled with dark grace… Leventhal’s stories are able to guide us through full ranges of emotions that are often only attainable in a longer work of fiction."—Ottawa Review of Books

"Anna Leventhal [is] one of Montreal’s quietly beloved literary personalities."—Cult MTL

“A subtle yet powerful debut… This is a collection to be read slowly, and one that will stick with its readers after they’re done.”—Inaudible

“Leventhal’s work grasps multiple and brazen connections between sisters, lovers, strangers, friends. These stories wander and please. They knife unexpectedly. Truth is lodged in all the cuts. These stories ‘know the things energy can do.’”—Tamara Faith Berger, author of Maidenhead

"I loved this little collection. Leventhal’s prose is jammed with similes and metaphors that slap you in the face like you’ve been hit with a dead rodent. I often read these gems and jealously said to myself, damn, I wish I had written that."—Christian McPherson

“Sweet Affliction is—no big deal or anything—one of the most successful, high-functioning, sometimes perfect collections of short stories I’ve read in recent memory.”—Andrew Hood, author of The Cloaca

“These are serious, vivacious tales, punk-rock and clear-eyed: Karen Russell corkscrewed with Joan Didion, and as compulsive to read as a Michael Chabon novel at full gallop.”—Sean Michaels, author of Us Conductors

Reviewers