Canada Made Me

This travelogue of three months Levine, a Canadian expat who had migrated semi-permanently to England, spent tramping across his native land in 1956 proved so unpopular in Canada it took two decades to find a publisher there. And you can see why: Levine has no time for postwar boosterism and, perennially short of money himself, is drawn to failures, to the rough country's shabby boardinghouses and sour beer halls, with a plain-spoken spirit of observation that might remind you of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. A book like this stands or falls on what it sees, and for that quality alone I found it a thrilling page-turner. I kept wanting to see what he would see next.