What is Stephen Harper Reading?

by Yann Martel

'The Prime Minister did not speak during our brief tribute, certainly not. I don’t think he even looked up. The snarling business of Question Period having just ended, he was shuffling papers. I tried to bring him close to me with my eyes.

Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares little for the arts.

But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate—that would be arrogant, less than that—to make suggestions to his stillness.

For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.'

Yann Martel

Book list to date

1. Book Number One: The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy
   
2. Book Number Two: Animal Farm, by George Orwell
   
3. Book Number Three: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
   
4. Book Number Four: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
   
5. Book Number Five: The Bhagavad Gita
   
6. Book Number Six: Bonjour Tristesse, by Françoise Sagan
   
7. Book Number Seven: Candide, by Voltaire
   
8. Book Number Eight: Short and Sweet: 101 very short poems, edited by Simon Armitage, published by Faber and Faber
   
9. Book Number Nine: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García Márquez
   
10. Book Number Ten: Miss Julia, by August Strindberg