Study for Obedience

“And in Canada the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize was won by Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience, an eerie and unsettling tale of xenophobia set in an unnamed northern country, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize earlier in the year. The Daily Telegraph declared it ‘a beautiful, riddling tale of a woman on the fringe of a rural community’ that, though ‘philosophically opaque,’ is both ‘elegant and electric.'” Read more...

Award-Winning Novels of 2023

Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor

“Scottish Canadian writer and literary scholar Sarah Bernstein’s unsettling, enigmatic second novel is about a woman who moves to an isolated, northern town in another country to look after her brother after his wife leaves him. Study for Obedience is an allusive book that will reward the reader who does not seek hard answers to the uncomfortable questions that haunt this atmospheric text.” Read more...

The Best Novels of 2023: The Booker Prize Shortlist

Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor