Gurjinder Basran

Gurjinder Basran studied creative writing at Simon Fraser University and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She lives in Delta, British Columbia.

Fiction

Everything Was Good-bye: A Novel

Salt Spring Island, B.C.: Mother Tongue Press, 2010.
Toronto: Penguin, 2012.
PS8603 .A789 E93 2012

Publisher’s Synopsis (from Mother Tongue Press website)

Everything Was Good-bye centers around Meena, a young Indo Canadian woman growing up in the lower mainland of British Columbia and traces her life as she struggles to assert her independence in a Punjabi community. Raised by her tradition bound widowed mother, Meena knows the freedoms of her Canadian peers can never be hers, but unlike her sisters, she is reluctant to submit to a life that is defined by a suitable marriage. Though a narrative moving between race and culture, it is ultimately a story of love, loss and self acceptance amidst shifting cultural ideals.

Awards and Honours

2010 Search for the Great B.C. Novel Contest (Winner)
2011 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize-BC Book Prizes (Winner)
2012 Chatelaine Book Club selection

Fiction

Someone You Love is Gone

Toronto: Viking, 2017.
PS8603 .A789 S66 2017

Publisher’s Synopsis

Simran is unable to move on. Grappling with the growing estrangement of her sister and daughter as well as the disintegration of her marriage, she wonders how her life has come to this. As the life she has carefully constructed unravels, she is forced to confront one of her most painful childhood memories–her parents sending her younger brother away from home.
Woven throughout are memories of Simran’s mother as a young woman in 1960s India. Her world had seemed beautiful and full of hope then. But when an unexpected event occurs, the results will have repercussions for generations to come.