Canon

The funniest, most immersive book I have read in such a long time … Truly original, brimming with humour, beauty, heartbreak, magic, and sharp language that will strike you deep down in your soul. Lewis has taken the hero’s journey and breathed new life, new wit, and new possibility into the genre and just like the best epics, you will make away bewildered by the prose but maybe have learned something necessary about living. In my house this is an instant classic – Danez SmithI promise that you have never read a book like Canon. It’s a scorchingly brilliant, wildly funny, and deeply moving epic. I loved it so much that upon finishing Canon, I immediately began rereading it – John GreenI wish I could spend a thousand more pages with the narrator of Canon, whose keenness, kindness, associative brilliance, storytelling authority, and crow-black humour make every line of this utterly singular novel a surprise and a delight. Lewis excels at translating the unspeakable dimensions of our living into language … [An] unprecedented page turner even at its most painful moments, Canon filled me with overwhelming joy … I have never read a novel like CANON - no one has – Karen RussellI did not know how badly I needed a funny epic in my life, didn’t know how both funny and epic a novel could be. This book is why I love novels, why I love reading.It is not only structurally pristine and brilliant, but a page turner, and a profound meditation on the meaning of this human journey we are on alone, together. It is truly and thoroughly hilarious, and tender, and beautiful – Tommy OrangeI keep staring at the words I’ve written to try and describe this novel; words like warm and hilarious and earnest and gorgeous and deeply weird. But none of them really capture its unique brand of magic or Lewis’ singular voice. Perhaps it’s hard to find the language because that’s what Canon does: gives us new language – Carmen Maria MachadoThis highly meta debut novel by acclaimed poet Lewis runs on two plot threads, both powered by winking references to epic yarns from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Bible to Moby-Dick and beyond… Lewis is in line with the postmodern satirists of the 1960s and ‘70s - John Barth, Robert Coover, William H. Gass - but with a new sensitivity about gender and sexuality, and a wit sharpened by the social media age. Lewis is questioning narrative, but their story is all cool assurance * Kirkus Reviews, starred review *Bonkers and beautiful * Publishers Weekly ‘Staff Pick’ *A fun, increasingly antic adventure story * New York Times *Strap in, folks … a clash of good and evil as epic as it is silly * NPR *This is one of the best novels of 2026 … Come for the talking whale, stay for the deep ruminations on belief and fate. This is going to blow your mind * Literary Hub *A mind-bending adventure about life, death, and fate that will ruin your life, in the best way * Bookriot *

Paige Lewis is the author of the poetry collection Space Struck and coeditor of Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance. Lewis teaches at the University of Iowa. Canon is their first novel.

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