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Advance Praise for

THE SLEEP OF APPLES
The Sleep of Apples is masterfully spare and rich, full of love, quakingly honest. Ami Sands Brodoff’s intricately-linked stories show us the ties between parents and children; a brief love between strangers; a tangling threesome; and a couple of teenagers broken by tragedy—just to name a few of the complex, enduring and delicate relationships in this collection. The spectre of death floats over these stories, reminding us of what it means “to be wide awake, here, unbearably happy.” Brodoff’s stories are sparklers held up in the dark—brief, fierce and bold.”

— Lisa Moore

author of Something for Everyone, Winner, Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction and February, Winner, Canada Reads and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. Three-time nominee for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Winner, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, long listed for the Man Booker Prize
"With The Sleep of Apples, Ami Sands Brodoff’s gifts of nuance, insight, and clarity bring us into communion with the fierce, tender solitudes of contemporary lives humbled and remade by grief and love. These deeply intimate and interlinked portraits, evoked with radiant lyricism, and displaying an impressive range of voices, ring with the force of truth."

— Elise Levine

author of This Wicked Tongue and Blue Field
"Ami Sands Brodoff’s stories ripple with wisdom and humour, alive with subtle observations and attention to the details of relationships. These stories range widely, fleshing out themes of mental health, family, and gender, taking us inside the minds of an experienced psychiatrist and a depressed teenager with equal empathy. These interconnected stories reach out for each other, forming a dense web of compassion."

— Alex Leslie
Winner, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ literature from The Writers’ Trust of Canada, author of We All Need To Eat and Vancouver for Beginners
"Magnificent. The Sleep of Apples exposes the consequences of being different, of risking tenderness, of illness and of grief. Ami Sands Brodoff speaks to the realities of our world in captivating and finely-rendered prose that reflects the sure hand of an accomplished novelist. We fall in love with the recurring characters, we are haunted by their pain, we root for them, and celebrate moments of grace when they transcend the suffering that life flings their way."

— Cora Siré
author of Behold Things Beautiful
"The Sleep of Apples is such a powerful collection. Encompassing voices of loss, mourning, birth, and spirituality, an extraordinary group of interconnected characters work to discover their identities. Brodoff’s writing is eloquent and illuminating. Reading these stories made me long to revisit them again and again. You will too."

— Hasan Namir
author of God In Pink, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and War/Torn, Stonewall Book Award, Honour Book Winner

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Welcome readers,

Ami Sands Brodoff is the award-winning author of three novels and two volumes of stories. The Sleep of Apples, her new linked story collection centres on nine closely-linked characters who confront crises related to mental illness, mortality, and gender identity. Ami’s novel, In Many Waters, focuses on three orphans whose lives intersect on the island of Malta, and grapples with our current refugee crisis. The White Space Between won The Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction (The Vine Award), and is the story of a mother and daughter struggling with the impact of the Holocaust. Bloodknots, a volume of thematically linked stories about marginalized families on the edge, dramatizes the threads that bind people together and the ones that unravel without warning. Bloodknots was a finalist for The Re-Lit Award. Her debut novel, Can You See Me? penetrates into both the point-of-view of a young man with schizophrenia and the sister who struggles to help him. The novel was nominated for The Pushcart Prize and is a recommended book of NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill).

The Sleep of Apples

The Sleep of Apples is the story of nine, closely-linked characters who confront crises related to mental illness, mortality, and gender identity.

In Many Waters

In Many Waters is the gripping story of three orphans whose lives intersect on the island of Malta during our current, urgent refugee crisis. For the first time since the Second World War, the number of refugees worldwide has surged past 60 million, according to the United Nations.

The White Space Between

Winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction. A family’s story of the Holocaust lies buried in the soil of a graveyard in Prague, in the old neighborhoods of Montreal, and in the memory of Jana—a woman finally asked to bear witness.

ABOUT THE SLEEP OF APPLES

In her masterful new collection, The Sleep of Apples, Ami Sands Brodoff writes with passion and consummate skill about nine closely-linked characters who walk the tightrope of survival. Set in a gritty Montreal neighborhood that’s been slowly gentrifying over the last two decades, troubled teenagers and an experienced psychiatrist, a truck driver permanently scarred by a near-fatal accident and a recreation therapist, struggle to build a community and make their lives—and their deaths—meaningful.

Fierce, original, and bracingly honest, these unforgettable stories speak to the author’s Jewish heritage, her experience as a cancer survivor, and loving mother to a gay son and a transgender son. The stories dramatize that families are what we create, not necessarily those we are born into, how we all live imperfect lives: We love what we have and mourn what we’ve lost.

Readers are witnesses, as these indelible characters gain strength, insight, and empathy through their struggles and suffering. They each bear the scars of trauma, but possess the gift of resilience.
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contact Ami

ami@amisandsbrodoff.com

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THE SLEEP OF APPLES

— Lisa Moore

— Elise Levine

author of This Wicked Tongue and Blue Field

— Alex Leslie

Winner, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ literature from The Writers’ Trust of Canada, author of We All Need To Eat and Vancouver for Beginners

— Cora Siré

author of Behold Things Beautiful

— Hasan Namir

author of God In Pink, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and War/Torn, Stonewall Book Award, Honour Book Winner

Welcome readers,

The Sleep of Apples

In Many Waters

The White Space Between

ABOUT THE SLEEP OF APPLES

contact Ami

events

Upcoming Events

PAST EVENTS