2012 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour

The Sisters Brothers (M) by Patrick deWitt has been awarded the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in addition to its other awards including the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

"Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn’t share his brother’s appetite for whiskey and killing, he’s never known anything else. But their prey isn’t an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm’s gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living — and whom he does it for. With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters — losers, cheaters, and ne’er-do-wells from all stripes of life — and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humour, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love." publisher

Other nominees included:

Happiness Economics (M)
by Shari Lapena;

On the Outside Looking Indian (M)
by Rupinder Gill;

The Woefield Poultry Collective (M)
by Susan Juby;

Most of Me (M)
by Michele Levy.