Issues

The 50 Issues Project
Issue #107

Issue Date: Summer, 1994
Editor: Derk Wynand
Pages: 229
Number of contributors: 59

Buy Issue 107: Print Edition


Cover of issue #107

This mammoth special summer issue, concurrent with the XV Commonwealth Games in Victoria, includes writing from across the empire. According to Derk Wynand's “Notes,” the issue encompasses a “cultural component” for the games, the tone set by the writers, and surprisingly, “features no Caribbean writers ... living in Canada.”

Perhaps the most notable work, translated specifically for this issue, is Madulu Mohamed Waheed's “The Silver Cylinder.” The short story relates the effects of a chemical weapon that washes up on the shore of the Maldives. Narration and the temporality of before and after the explosion, crafts a tone, ironically suggesting, “it was lucky in a way that [the bomb] had washed up on a place like the Maldives.”

The sole Canadian voice, Eleanor Wachtel, interviews Vikram Seth, winner of the 1994 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for A Suitable Boy. This interview was prepared in collaboration with Peter Kavanagh and was also broadcast on CBC radio’s “Writers & Company.”

There are too many excellent authors to list them all, yet this multinational troupe represents the diverse voices of Australia to Zimbabwe; with a deft flip of the page, issue one hundred and seven, can showcase the many works that are not often seen in the pages of The Malahat Review.

—stephen e. leckie

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