Finalist, Danuta Gleed Literary Award

In a bold, brilliant collection of stories, Dora Award-winning playwright Anton Piatigorsky delivers a superbly inspired inquiry into the early lives of the 20th century's most notorious tyrants. In The Iron Bridge, he is unafraid to push at the boundaries of the unexpected as he breathes fictionalized life into the adolescents who would grow up to become the most brutal dictators the world has ever known.

We discover a teenaged Mao Tse-Tung refusing an arranged marriage; Idi Amin cooking for the British Army; Stalin living in a seminary; and a melodramatic young Adolf Hitler dreaming of vast architectural achievements. Piatigorsky dazzlingly explores moments that are nothing more than vague incidents in the biographies of these men, expanding mere footnotes into entire realities as he ingeniously fills the gaps of the historical record.

The Iron Bridge, completely imagined yet captivatingly real, captures those crucial instants in time that may well have helped to deliver some of the most infamous leaders in history.

About the Author
Anton Piatigorsky has twice won the Dora Mavor Moore Award. Eternal Hydra, commissioned by the Stratford Festival, was called "one of the best Canadian plays of the past decade" by NOW magazine and opened in Vancouver at the Touchstone Theatre in October 2012. The chamber opera, Airline Icarus, for which he wrote the libretto, won the Italian Primo Fedora Award in 2011. He was most recently the playwright in residence for Soulpepper. His play, Breath in Between, premiered at Toronto's Summerworks Festival in August 2012.

Reviews
"Piatigorsky never attempts to answer the question about human nature. Each of his characters is carefully constructed, and the reasons behind why they would go on to become menacing figures and murderers of such magnitude are left to the reader's imagination. This is the strength of The Iron Bridge: the idea is not to explain, but to narrate. These are good stories - well-written, interesting, and engaging. The premise is not a gimmick, so much as a jumping-off point for the fiction. The Iron Bridge is an intriguing idea, well executed." -- Heather Cromarty * Quill & Quire *
"Anton Piatigorsky has found a rich gothic seam in 20th-century dictatorship, and, in six subtle and learned tales, sets the genre upon the weird adolescences of Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Rafael Trujillo and Hitler. The Iron Bridge is such a rich text, based on such weighty sources...that each story demands essays and dissertations in response. Piatigorsky solves historical fiction's dilemmas with enviable skill and originality." -- Ronald Elliott Brown * National Post *
"Piatigorsky's skill as a playwright translates well into novel writing. His descriptions clearly allow the reader to empathize with the protaganist - a great trick when one realizes one is reading about the childhood of a hated dictator.... And Piatigorsky is great in describing emotions, even when the sentiment is cold and foreign to the reader.... Anton Piatigorsky's The Iron Bridge is a thought-provoking read. Make a reader rethink and consider history is one thing that good literature is meant to do, which this novel has done in abundance." * The Library of the Found Inkwell *
"An astounding collection of intricate and rigorous character studies. The Iron Bridge bravely takes us deep into the nuanced, damaged psyches of men we would prefer to think of as monsters. Thrilling, brazen, brilliant, and deeply felt. The most compelling stories I've read in years." -- Sarah Polley
"With an invigorating mix of classic storytelling and inventiveness, Anton Piatigorsky's pitch-perfect, acutely attuned stories delve deep, and far, and wide, The Iron Bridge is an assured, unique collection, and a seamless transition to fiction from one of our best playwrights." -- Pasha Malla


Awards
Short-listed for Danuta Gleed Award for Short Fiction 2013 (Canada).



Book Information
ISBN 9780864926746
Author Anton Piatigorsky
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Goose Lane Editions
Publisher Goose Lane Editions
Weight(grams) 303g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 127mm * 17mm