To mark the tenth anniversary of the Toronto Life fiction issue, we gathered together a panel of Toronto writers, all of whom, at one point or another, have been featured in our pages—Sheila Heti, Andrew Pyper and Shyam Selvadurai. Here, in part two of their conversation, the trio talk about their favourite books of the past five years, CanLit’s failed promise, and why Kafka should be taught in high school.

Mark Pupo: A couple of months ago, The New York Times published its list of the best American fiction of the past 25 years. What do you think would be the best five Canadian books of the same period?

Sheila Heti: I’d have to have read a lot more Canadian fiction from the past 25 years to give a worthwhile answer.

Shyam Selvadurai: I could name them, but you’d just end up with the big, older writers simply because they’ve been writing for longer and they produce the finest books. They produce bad books too, but… You always end up with Atwood, Ondaatje, Mistry, Vassanji. What’s so exciting about that list?

Andrew Pyper: I employ the criterion of, not so much best or greatest in a kind of pantheonic sense, but rather the books I liked the most, or remembered the most. It’s going to sound like the fucking Giller lists of the past five years.

SS: Why shouldn’t it be? Those are the great writers.

AP: Okay, well, I do like these books. Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version. Alice Munro’s Open Secrets. Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Last Crossing. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. And, for the sheer fun of it, Russell Smith’s How Insensitive. All of these are fun books that I remember where I was when I was reading them. And all of them are solid, well-constructed, interesting books.

SS: Well, like you, Andrew, I would choose my books based on how transformative they were. So, they would be Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. M.G. Vassanji’s Book of Secrets. Alice Munro… oh God, it’s hard. I’m just going to say the latest one, Runaway. Then, I was thinking of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. But I’m not sure if it’s too old. Some of my favourite writers were publishing more than 25 years ago. Margaret Laurence, for example.

AP: Yeah, I wanted to say Bear by Marian Engel.

SS: Okay, if I can’t have Obasan, I’ll throw in a quirky one: Elizabeth Hay’s Garbo Laughs. I have a real thing for that book. I thought it was skilfully plotted and surprising.

SH: Okay, I’ll play then. How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, by Dany Laferrière. I love that book. The Broken Record Technique by Lee Henderson. He’s from Vancouver, and it’s a great short story collection. Emily Schultz’s first collection of stories, Black Coffee Night. Darren O’Donnell’s book Social Acupuncture, which I was mentioning before, is a play and a long essay on art. Those are some. But I can’t categorically say those are the best. Just the ones that excited me at the time.

MP: O’Donnell also had a novel out a couple of years ago.

SH: It was Your Secrets Sleep With Me, in which the CN Tower has fallen down. It’s all set in Toronto.

MP: And in it, Toronto is in a sort of perpetual teenagehood. O’Donnell stands out as someone who is changing writing in the city. In subtle ways, anyway.

SH: He does a lot of interesting theatre projects. He just did a project called Haircuts By Children, in which he got a bunch of kids from different schools and had barbers teach them how to cut hair. He believes children should be involved in the political process, so this was about trust. Like, would you trust a child to cut your hair? It was pretty neat. [laughs]

MP: Are there any other pressing concerns in Toronto or Canadian publishing, other than the terror of e-books or the death of reading?

SS: Well, publishing is in the doldrums and that’s kind of sad. Ten years ago, it was so exciting. Is it just me? Am I jaded? It seems like everyone is so tired and down.

SH: What do you mean?

SS: Well, in the publishing community, everyone seems so frightened to me.

SH: It’s hard to do business.

MP: Do you mean the publishers or the writers?

SS: I’m talking about the publishers. But also, as a result, the writers. Fiction is definitely in recession. Everyone wants non-fiction. A lot of my writer friends are looking for other jobs. Others have stopped writing because they can’t support themselves any more.

AP: But publishing has always been a gloomy, pessimistic profession. For as long as there have been publishers, it’s been, “Oh, God, here we go, it’s over.” But you’re right, there has been a statistically verifiable shrinkage of the fiction market. It’s interesting how that is corresponding with another development, which is the professionalization of writing. There are so many Master of Fine Arts programs in Canada, so many workshops or summer teaching programs, writing circles, getaways. There’s this industry around writing that just did not exist in Canada 10 years ago.