How Did We Get Into This Mess? The Stories We Tell Ourselves

We have come to understand the world through the lens of reality television, so perhaps it is less surprising that a reality television star is now the most powerful person on the planet. We have arrived at this place because the human brain is addicted to narrative, especially to tight, internally consistent narratives of heroism and villainy, that reject complexity. These are the salted fried snacks of the intellect. This is how Canadians went to war fifteen years ago, and this is how we accepted our embrace of torture. This is how the Americans have come to their current predicament. Kevin Patterson’s new novel, News from the Red Desert (2016, Random House of Canada) has been acclaimed by The Globe and Mail as “one of the finest war novels this country has ever seen.”

Kevin Patterson grew up in Manitoba, and put himself through medical school by joining the Canadian army. Now a specialist in internal medicine, he practises in the Arctic and on the coast of British Columbia. His first book, The Water In Between (1999), a travel memoir of a sailing expedition in the Pacific, was a New York Times Notable Book. Country of Cold (2003), his debut short fiction collection, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2003 and the inaugural City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. He was co-editor of Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan in the Words of Its Participants (2008). His latest novel, News from the Red Desert (2016, Random House of Canada) has been acclaimed by The Globe and Mail as “one of the finest war novels this country has ever seen.”