My Thievery of the People

From the highways of Cairo to the outports of Newfoundland, the soul-crushing cubicles of city work and the deceptive perils of the Quebec countryside, these brilliant short stories lay bare the workings of power and the small acts of both courage and compromise by which those on the margins defy them.

Beautifully cohesive across the stunning depth and range of setting and subject, there is nothing predictable about My Thievery of the People.

Leila Marshy is of Palestinian-Newfoundland parentage and lives in Montreal. During the First Intifada, she worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Cairo, the Palestinian Mental Health Association in Gaza, and Medical Aid for Palestine in Montreal. In 2011 she founded Friends of Hutchison, a groundbreaking community group bringing Hasidic and non-Hasidic neighbours together in dialogue. Her first novel, The Philistine, was published in 2018 and in French in 2021.

ISBN: 9781771863773
Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
Publisher: Baraka Books
Published: March 01, 2025

"With My Thievery of the People, Marshy establishes herself as a masterful writer of intricate, intergenerational plots. (...) By turns cynical and tender, My Thievery of the People breaks the complacency of the everyday through shock, satire, and the gravitas of subtext." Shafia Hafiz Ramji Literary Review of Canada"Probably my favourite short story collection of the year, so far, My Thievery of the people, Stories is imbued with qualities both folkloric and darkly magical, as well as violent and adamantly political, featuring heroines aplenty." Thalia Stopa, Scout Book Club."A household in a Montreal suburb suffused with marital tension, a dusty village in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, a mysteriously archaic travelling circus: My Thievery is a delightfully engrossing and awe-inspiring collection that transports us from the mundane to the exotic and spaces in between, all in the service of the sort of satisfying, trend-defying morality tales in which the consequences of our choices can include death---or at least retribution." Anita Anand, A Convergence of Solitudes "This collection is exhilarating. Marshy uses her distinctive style and wild strength to draw the reader at high speed from geopolitical reality to psychological peril, through the inner lives of refugees, queers in love and grief, wives, workers, and so many others fighting their way out from under." ?? Elise Moser, Because I Have Loved and Hidden It