The Lost City of Atlantis (our future, rather than our past): Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and James Cairns’ In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times

About this episode

Linda Morra discusses the Kingston Writers Fest and explores the themes of dystopian literature through the works of Cherie Dimaline and James Cairns, using Atlantis as a metaphor for the future.

In this episode, Linda begins by speaking about the Kingston Writers Fest (KWF ) - if you are in reasonable distance, you MUST go! The most incredible line-up of authors will be there, including Madeleine Thien, Margaret Atwood, Canisia Lubrin, Nita Prose, and Ian Williams. She then thinks about Atlantis - what if Atlantis were about our future and not our past? She uses Atlantis as a way of considering the dystopian novel, C herie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (Penguin Random House). Using James Cairns’ In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Trouble Times (Wolsak & Wyne) , she thinks about why we read novels that are apocalyptic in nature. Cairns, she notes, refers to Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind (HarperCollins ) and shows how we get some measure of satisfaction from reading them. Dimaline’s novel may offer that kind of satisfaction, but it is very much based in Indigenous community and what Daniel Heath Justice would call “embodied sovereignty.” Other highlights: The Lost City of Atlantis (2:15; 3:04; 4:22) Plato (2:50; 3:11) Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (4:12) Thomas More’s Utopia (4:14) Shakespeare’s Macbeth , hubris, and the tyranny of completion (8:14) Daniel Heath…

People in this episode

Host: Linda Morra

Topics covered

• dystopian literature
• Indigenous community
• apocalyptic themes
• literary analysis
• Kingston Writers Fest
• Atlantis as a metaphor

Keywords

• Atlantis
• dystopian novel
• Cherie Dimaline
• James Cairns
• Indigenous literature
• apocalyptic
• literary themes
• Kingston Writers Fest

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Marrow Thieves, In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times, Leave the World Behind, New Atlantis, Utopia, Macbeth

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