The author of Held, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024, talks about how her novel explores the conflation of science with technology, and the books that have changed the way she thinks about the world
Anne Michaels
Anne Michaels is a Canadian novelist and poet. Her books have been translated into more than 50 languages
Michaels has won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Award for Fiction. Among many other honours she is a Guggenheim Fellow, has received honorary degrees, and has served as Toronto’s Poet Laureate. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted as a feature film. Her most recent books include All We Saw, Infinite Gradation and Railtracks (co-written with 1972 Booker Prize winner John Berger). In 2020, her novel Fugitive Pieces was chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Novels that Shaped the World.
She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 for Held.
A kaleidoscopic novel about war, trauma, science, faith and, above all, love and human connection. Reading it seems to alter your state of mind
The 2024 judges on Held
A Q&A with Anne Michaels
Watch our film
All nominated books
In a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence ignite and re-ignite as the century unfolds
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