André Alexis wins Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

The third time was a charm for Toronto-based writer André Alexis. He was awarded the 2015 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for his novel, Fifteen Dogs.  Alexis had previously been nominated for the prize in 1998 and in 2014.

The premise of the book is that Greek gods Hermes and Apollo wager a bet. Apollo bets that animals would be more unhappy than humans if they had human intelligence. Apollo then grants human consciousness to a group of dogs at a Toronto veterinary clinic. The gods watch to see how the dogs respond. In order for Hermes to win the bet, at least one dog must be happy at the end of his or her life.

Fifteen Dogs is also shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, to be awarded Nov.10. It's published by Coach House Books.

Alexis joined As it Happens host Carol Off in studio to discuss the prize and Fifteen Dogs. Here is a short excerpt from their conversation.

Carol Off: One of the dogs who becomes the most conscious is Prince, who is a mutt but he becomes a poet. He genuinely loves language, the language [the dogs] develop, and this beauty of language and communicating, which many of the dogs resent. Why is that?

André Alexis: The thing about Prince, for me, is that he does love language. He also loves puns. He also is like the dogs' first standup comic in a way. But what I like about him is in his love for language, it's not just the love of language. It's a love of art. It's that Prince is manifestly an artist, and that he is able to take what I give as a curse, which is the imposition of human thinking on dogs, and turn it into something that is valuable and precious to him. That's the thing that is so deep for me, that there are beings, individuals, that are able to take what we are in, which is a dark and mysterious and violent place (the world is very violent) and turn it into something precious and good and deep. And that's still fantastically mysterious to me.

CO: Having read the novel, and someone else I know who has read it has said the same thing, that we have pets and it's very difficult now to look at our own pets and not see them differently now, and actually become quite conscious and self-conscious of them watching us. Did you expect that to happen with people?

AA: No. I didn't know what reaction I would have to the material as it came out, and it was a surprise to me that I cared so deeply about animals, dogs in particular, as I was writing this. Of course I spent a lot of time just thinking about that. Then when I went out and looked at dogs in the real world I felt a kind of relationship to them that I hadn't had. I thought that was just me. I wasn't sure that other people would feel that too, but I guess there's an intensity of pretending that you're a dog that leads you to wondering what a dog actually does feel and think and experience in the world.

This interview was edited for length and clarity. 

To hear the full interview please click on the Listen audio link above.