TORONTO, June 2, 2017 /CNW/ - Indigo (TSX: IDG), the world's first cultural department store for booklovers, is delighted to kick off its Canada 150 celebrations with the launch of its brand new coffee table book The World Needs More Canada. Also launching today is Indigo's list of Top 10 Canadian books of all time. The Top 10 books are available individually, or the Top 5 are available in a beautiful, limited-edition boxed set, available for pre-order at indigo.ca today.

"We are proud of our Canadian heritage, and believe there is no better way to celebrate Canada's 150^th birthday than with a great Canadian book," said Krishna Nikhil, EVP of Print at Indigo. "For years, we've championed the notion that 'The World Needs More Canada' and we are excited to release a book with that very title. The World Needs More Canada is our birthday card to Canada, full of anecdotes from some of Canada's most celebrated culture-makers, from authors and artists to poets and filmmakers. Through this book we hope to inspire a sense of pride in all Canadians – not just on July 1^st, but every day throughout the year."

Indigo's first-ever coffee table book, The World Needs More Canada, celebrates more than 100 Canadian celebrities and storytellers who have made their mark on this great country. This one-of-a-kind book features commentary and candid photography from an eclectic mix of Canadians, from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Drake, Margaret Atwood, Douglas Copeland, and Malcolm Gladwell. Available exclusively at Indigo locations and indigo.ca, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation, transforming high-needs elementary schools across Canada.  

Indigo has created its list of the Top 10 Canadian books of all time to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday. Perfect for gifting, each book on this list was selected by Indigo's expert booksellers across the country to reflect their favourite Canadian books and ensure there is a title on this list that every Canadian will love.

Top 10 Canadian Books

Important and iconic – these are the Top 10 books that belong in every Canadian's library, according to Indigo's expert booksellers:

1. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
   When Marilla Cuthbert and her brother, Matthew, decide to adopt a child from a distant orphanage, they don't get quite what they bargained for. The child who awaits them at the tiny Bright River train station is not the strapping young boy they'd imagined--but rather, a freckle-faced, redheaded girl named Anne (with an e, if you please). Armed with only a battered carpetbag and a boundless imagination, Anne charms her way into the Cuthbert's hearts and into the hearts of readers as well.
   
   
2. Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
   Lives of Girls and Women is the intensely readable, touching, and very funny story of Del Jordan, a young woman who journeys from the carelessness of childhood through an uneasy adolescence in search of love and sexual experience. As Del dreams of becoming famous, suffers embarrassment about her mother, endures the humiliation of her body's insistent desires, and tries desperately to fall in love, she grapples with the crises that mark the passage to womanhood.
   
   
3. The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
   Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, The Inconvenient Indian distills the insights gleaned from Thomas King's critical and personal meditation on what it means to be "Indian" in North America. King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands.  This is a book both timeless and timely, burnished with anger but tempered by wit, and ultimately a hard-won offering of hope--a sometimes inconvenient but nonetheless indispensable account for all of us seeking to understand how we might tell a new story for the future.
   
   
4. Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler
   Ebullient, perverse, and thrice married, Barney Panofsky has always clung to two cherished beliefs: life is absurd, and nobody truly ever understands anybody else. But when his sworn enemy publicly states that Barney is a wife abuser, an intellectual fraud and probably a murderer, he is driven to write his own memoirs. Charged with comic energy and a wicked disregard for any pieties whatsoever, Barney's Version is a brilliant portrait of a man whom Mordecai Richler has made uniquely memorable for all time. It is also an unforgettable love story, a story about family and the riches of friendship.
   
   
5. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
   A visceral portrait of life at a crossroads, The Orenda opens with a brutal massacre and the kidnapping of the young Iroquois Snow Falls, a spirited girl with a special gift. Her captor, Bird, is an elder and one of the Huron Nation's great warriors and statesmen. It has been years since the murder of his family, and yet they are never far from his mind. In Snow Falls, Bird recognizes the ghost of his lost daughter, and sees the girl possesses powerful magic that will be useful to him on the troubled road ahead. Bird's people have battled the Iroquois for as long as he can remember, but both tribes now face a new, more dangerous threat from afar. Christophe, a charismatic Jesuit missionary, has found his calling amongst the Huron and devotes himself to learning and understanding their customs and language in order to lead them to Christ. An emissary from distant lands, he brings much more than his faith to the new world. As these three souls connect, small battles erupt into bigger wars and a nation emerges from worlds in flux.
   
   
6. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
   In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate "Handmaids" under the new social order, who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred's persistent memories of life in the "time before" and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid's Tale is at once satire and dire warning.
   
   
7. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
   One boy. One boat. One tiger. After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan--and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and beloved works of fiction in recent years.
   
   
8. Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire
   When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire received the call to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in 1993, he thought he was heading off on a modest and straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned and suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in only a hundred days. In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes the reader with him on a return voyage into the hell of Rwanda, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings.
   
   
9. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
   With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of lightening.
   
   
10. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
    A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry's stunning, internationally-acclaimed bestseller, is set in mid-1970s India. It tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil, soon after the government declares a "State of Internal Emergency." Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances – and their fates – become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen. Mistry's prose is alive with enduring images and a cast of unforgettable characters. Written with compassion, humour, and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured, and powerful novel written by one of the most gifted writers of our time.

About Indigo Books & Music Inc.

Indigo is a publicly traded Canadian company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (IDG). As the largest book, gift and specialty toy retailer in Canada, Indigo operates in all provinces under different banners including Indigo Books & Music; Indigo Books, Gifts, Kids; Indigospirit; Chapters; and Coles. The online channel, indigo.ca, offers a one-stop online shop with a robust selection of books, toys, home décor, stationery, and gifts.

SOURCE Indigo Books & Music Inc.

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2017/02/c3559.html