CBC BOOKS CANADIAN FICTION BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2024

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 GILLER PRIZE

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 DAYNE OGILVIE PRIZE FOR LGBTQ2S+ EMERGING WRITERS

FINALIST FOR THE ATWOOD GIBSON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE

STARRED REVIEWS IN KIRKUS, BOOKLIST AND QUILL & QUIRE

A heartbreaking tale of a family and an impossible love, torn apart by secrets and traditions in late-twentieth-century Cairo.

As a boy in 1960s Cairo, Tarek knows that his entire life is written in advance. He’ll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eyes of his mother and his sister, he starts to do just that – until Ali enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men, from very different worlds, embark on an unsayable relationship that threatens to tear apart Tarek’s family.
Years later, as Tarek is living a solitary life in Montreal, someone starts writing about him and to him, piecing together a past he wants only to forget. But who is the writer of this tale? And will he figure it out in time?

A bestseller in its original Quebec edition, and the recipient of several awards, including the Prix Femina des Lycéens, What I Know About You is poised to be an international sensation.

"This novel is a searing love story that moves between Egypt and Montréal, that shifts between hearts, highlighting the sacrifices the characters feel they have to make for the ones they love. Romantic, surprising, mesmerizing, and so devastating, What I Know About You examines the terrible costs of family secrets and toxic shame." – Suzette Mayr, author of The Sleeping Car Porter

Born in Montreal to Egyptian parents, Éric Chacour has shared his life between France and Quebec. A graduate in applied economics and international relations, he now works in the financial sector in Montreal. What I Know About You is his first novel.

Éric Chacour's profile page

Pablo Strauss is the translator of twelve works of fiction, several graphic novels, and the screenplay of one feature film, White Dog (2022). He is a three-time finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for translation for The Country Will Bring Us No Peace (Coach House Books, 2020), Synapses (Talonbooks, 2019), and The Longest Year (House of Anansi, 2017). The Dishwasher, his translation of Stéphane Larue’s Le plongeur, won the 2020 Amazon Canada First Novel Award. He has published essays, reviews, and translations in Granta, Geist, The Literary Review of Canada, The Globe and Mail and The Montreal Review of Books. Pablo grew up in Victoria, BC, and has made his home in Quebec City for fifteen years.

Pablo Strauss' profile page

• Short-listed, Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Prize
• Short-listed, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers
• Short-listed, Giller Prize
• Winner, Première Plume award
• Winner, Prix des Cinq Continents

"A splendid exercise in melancholy and heartbreak with highly empathetic characters, Chacour’s first novel is beautifully written and superbly translated from the French by Pablo Strauss. It is not to be missed." – Michael Cart, Booklist ★ STARRED Review

"The slow-burn story of Tarek, a Levantine Christian doctor whose life seems prescribed for him in every matter, even love...Chacour’s exceptional restraint in divulging information lets the tension build, carrying the book into the revelation of who is writing Tarek’s story. All the author’s formal risks result in well-earned rewards." – Kirkus, ★ STARRED Review

"What I Know About You is a cerebral yet emotionally resonant slow burn with an intriguing structure that serves Chacour’s plot extremely well. In any language, this is a devastatingly beautiful story." – Dory Cerny, Quill & Quire, ★ STARRED Review

“One man’s love for another breaches the norms of gender, society and class in the otherwise modernizing, secular Egypt of Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat. Tarek, a doctor, nurtures a love that comes to him unexpectedly and neither his country, nor his family is able to accept. Elegantly told and profoundly affecting, What I Know About You speaks to the inherited moral structures constraining us, and to the alienation of a man’s inner life rendered external. Tarek leaves Cairo and his marriage for Montreal, a cold and foreign city in which his otherness is of a more ordinary kind but, when circumstances finally permit, returns to confront the past and its consequences nebulously in pursuit of him. Here is a quiet, touching story in which the acts of yearning, stymied hearts transcend their troubled genesis and move their hosts towards the possibility of redemption that is love’s essence.” – 2024 Giller Prize Jury Citation

“What I Know About You announces Chacour as a storyteller of rare ability: deeply emotional in his substance, elegant and restrained in his style. Chacour is a master of perspective and careful revelation. In his hands, this story about taboo love and a family’s legacy overflows with crushing beauty as it grips readers in its world. What I Know About You is cruel and tender, surprising and inexorable, delicate and overwhelming, necessary and timeless. It is a story that is unlikely to be forgotten.” – 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize jury

"At its core, What I Know About You is a profoundly human story – a tale of love, loss, and the enduring human spirit. Every emotion is earned and resonates deeply, a testament to Chacour’s skillful storytelling." – Britta Stromeyer, On the Seawall

"In his beguiling debut, What I Know About You, Éric Chacour delicately explores the circumstances that create distance between people, and the limits of what anyone can know about those they love...a richly textured portrait of Cairo from the 1960s through the 2000s, and a nuanced exploration of queer relationships." – Laura Stackton, Bookpage

This striking debut is a vivid novel about what honesty can cost you, even when almost everything is left unsaid." – Keith Mosman, Powell's

"Astute prose that reveals as much through words as it does through silences ... What I Know About You is a heartrending novel in which unanswered questions and unvoiced feelings take on a life of their own." – Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews

“A novel of secrets kept and vows broken among the members of a worldly, Levantine Christian family in Cairo, clinging to tradition amid radical societal change from the 1960s to the 21st century. That larger story is fascinating, but it takes a back seat to the even more intriguing twists and turns within the household. The sense of intimacy Éric Chacour (and his translator, Pablo Strauss) have achieved with What I Know About You is astonishing.” – James Crossley, Leviathan Bookstore

"A magnificent debut novel about family secrets and loves that endure long after their breaking point." – L’Actualité

"A writer who charts his own course, polishing each sentence until it conveys the totality of the observable world, from the smallest gesture and look to the displacements contained in our life choices. A story of love, memory, and devastation." – Jury statement, Prix des cinq continents (winner)

"Éric Chacour’s writing is poetic and precise. A wonderful new voice and one of 2023’s most remarkable books." – Mali Navia, Chatelaine

"An intimate conversation fraught with things left unsaid and secrets revealed, told with a delicate understatement. Masterful." – Shirley Saver, Jury Chair, 2023 Première Plume award

"Certain novels leave an indelible mark – this is one of them." – Dominique Lemieux, Les libraires

"So powerfully resonant and ingeniously constructed, it is hard to believe this is a first novel." – Léa Harvey, Le soleil

"A beautiful debut about family secrets and loves that last far past their breaking point." – Julie Roy, L'Actualité

"A finely honed debut … with an intricate, original architecture." – Philippe Villard, Tribune de Genève

"A story of forbidden love, deep roots and escaping them … leavened with stylistic brio and profundity." – Odile Tremblay, Le Devoir

"A debut that already feels like a classic." – Mohammed Aïssaoui, Le Figaro

"Razor-sharp yet sensual prose … plumbs the depths of a man torn between two worlds and two eras, for a vibrant portrait of a changing society … Dazzling." – Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec, Le Devoir

"A sensual, intricate, political first novel." – Virginie Bloch-Lainé, Libération

"A sublime story of absence and reconciliation." – Sandrine Bajos, Le Parisien

"The writing is silken, suggestive, skillful and touching." – Sylvain Sarrazin, La Presse