“Songs for the End of the World” – Saleema Nawaz

Wednesday, September 9, 2020 at 7:00 pm via Zoom

The Ottawa Society for the Arts and Sciences (OSFAS) and Perfect Books invite you to join us in celebrating Saleema Nawaz’s new Novel Songs for the End of the World. Such is the perspicacity of Saleema Nawaz, in her most recent novel, of anticipating many of the details of the current pandemic virus (COVID-19) that her publisher, McClelland & Stewart, moved the ebook edition forward from August 2020 to April of this year. The trade paperback will be published on August 25 and copies will be available from Perfect Books.

Saleema began research on her novel in 2013, long before anyone had conceived of the COVID-19 virus. As Maclean’s (April 30, 2020) wrote: “Nawaz immersed herself in scientific studies and expert predictions. The result…is both a lovely novel – haunting, morally nuanced and oddly hopeful –and a remarkably prescient portrait of our current situation.”

SONGS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD can be purchased now at PERFECT BOOKS, 258A Elgin St Ottawa, K2P 1L9 (Tel: 613-231-6468) Email : info@perfectbooks.ca). At the same time, you can register for an OSFAS meeting via Zoom at 7pm on September 9, 2020 in which Saleema will read an extract from her novel and answer questions in a live interview – an event not to be missed.

Saleema Nawaz grew up in Centretown Ottawa, where she attended Lisgar Collegiate before taking a Humanities Degree at Carleton University. Thereafter she took an MA at the University of Manitoba whither she was attracted by a creative thesis option. She has also attended the writing studio program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. After writing shorter fiction, Saleema’s first full-length novel Bone and Bread, 2013, is set in Ottawa and Montreal and won the Quebec Writers’ Federation fiction award.