Most contemporary Canadian novelists are writing within an urban context. To be more precise, their concerns are generally those of our society in its more "highly developed" state—the problem of alienation, a sense of personal guilt, the search for basic values, the healing power of love—all are concerns which modern Canadian novelists explore, often with great skill and sensitivity. The nature of these concerns is often shaped by a vision of the world in which the traditional feelings of community have broken down; the individual finds himself in existential isolation, charting his own fate with no exterior guide on which he can rely, and no possibility of any return to a state in which the individual can strengthen himself on the values of those with whom he shares his life.

If not entirely opposed to this mainstream of the contemporary Canadian novel, Rudy Wiebe's interests are...