Q: You’re novel Stan on Guard: A Two-Part Invention, was just released by Guernica Editions. Why write a novel about an immortal? Hasn’t that been done to, um, death?
A: Historical fiction can be pretty earnest sometimes. Making my narrator immortal meant I could approach each historical period through his jaded, present day perspective and give him a wry, anachronistic voice that has made him enormously fun to write. And to read, I hope.
About Stan on Guard: A Two-Part Invention:
Ishtanu (call him Stan) is a Hittite immortal keeping his head down in Toronto and recounting some of his experiences. Tróán is an immortal Trojan princess who thought she’d killed Stan in post-war Berlin but who now knows he survived. Yes, technically Stan can die. He has just managed not to for 3200 years.
As their stories braid together toward a final reckoning they take us through, among other things, a subversive retelling of the Odysseus story, the resistance of pagan Lithuania against Papal crusaders, the decline of Friedrich Nietzsche in a German clinic, the arts scene in belle epoque Paris, and the descent of Europe into the horrors of the Great War.
Strap in.
Stan On Guard is the follow-up to K. R. Wilson’s tragical-comical-historical novel Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Millennia, which was long-listed for the 2022 Leacock Medal for Humour.
About K.R. Wilson:
K. R. Wilson’s novel An Idea About My Dead Uncle won the inaugural Guernica Prize in 2018, and his novel Call Me Stan was long-listed for the 2022 Leacock Medal. His work has appeared in various literary journals and the flash fiction anthology This Will Only Take a Minute.