Jean Marc Ah-Sen was born in East York, Toronto, Ontario and continues to live in Toronto. He is descended from a family of winemakers on the island nation Mauritius located in the Indian Ocean.
Fiction
Grand Menteur
Toronto: Book Thug, 2015.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
The secret world of Mauritian street gangs is not for the faint of heart. Fraught with peril and mischief, its inner workings are a mystery to the daughter of one of its most valued members: Serge, the Grand Menteur. A liar of exceptional caliber whose sole responsibility is to purposefully confuse police with alibis, the Menteur fears for the criminal future he has unwittingly introduced into his daughter’s life, when her clear knack for violence attracts the notice of senior gang members.
Mauritian Kreol, English, and French blend together into a heady brew of language in Grand Menteur. Written in a nuanced style reflecting the island-nation’s convoluted history of colonialism, this debut novel by Jean Marc Ah-Sen sheds an unflinching light on the poverty and down-and-out hardship of a shadow class of immigrants from the 1940s to the ’80s.
Awards and Honours
2015 Globe and Mail Top 100 Books
Fiction
In the Beggarly Style of Imitation
Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2020.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Born on the twin backs of torpidity and obsession, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation is a voyage into the mind of one of the Canadian literary underground’s most unruly writers. Equal parts tribute to the historical genesis of the novel and the well-trodden subject of love, the exercises of imitation contained in this collection offer a brief survey through the illustrious forms and genres of literary expression: epistolary, aphorism, essay, picaresque, romance and satire culminate in a celebratory brand of fiction that proves with finality that imitation is truly the vilest form of flattery.
Awards and Honours
2020 Toronto Book Awards (Finalist)