“Writing a quality piece of literature requires a lot of stamina, creativity, observation and a talent for writing beautifully,” writes torontonka.com. But if we are talking about the genre of fiction, then another important quality is added, the presence of a good imagination. 

Claudia Casper can confidently be considered the owner of all of the above. After all, she managed to become a successful and celebrated Canadian writer.

Her immense popularity came from her novel, The Reconstruction. This work is about a woman engaged in the construction of a museum exhibit, which should help to recreate the heroine herself. Her other work, The Mercy Journals, describes the life of a soldier who, in 2047, is trying to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder. Subsequently, this work was awarded as the best science fiction in 2016.

Her early years

Our heroine is a native of Toronto. Claudia was a student at the Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute in Toronto and later went to the SEED Alternative School. It was one of the first free schools in Toronto. The writer later recalled the school as “a slightly scary hotbed of creativity, drugs and sex.” But there, Claudia was allowed to choose the subjects she wanted to study. As a result, the girl created her own curriculum for herself.

Getting a job

Our heroine started working at age sixteen in one of the Toronto bookstores. Her earnings the future novelist spent on traveling, including solo bike trips across Germany.

By the time Claudia received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto, she was an employee of The Globe and Mail.

When her studies came to an end, she decided to apply for a position as a copy editor at one of the other Toronto publications. But unfortunately, she fell short of their tests. Then our heroine got a job at the Vancouver-based Pulp Press publishing company, where she worked as a typesetter.

Her first large-scale work

Our heroine’s authorial debut came when she completed a short piece she had written for a contest in the magazine publication Event. She successfully won it, giving Canadian readers an insight into a new writer. 

Later, Claudia started writing The Reconstruction, regarded as her first full-length novel. In this piece, the author tells the story of a woman chosen to create a museum exhibit. It is about a hominid whose skeleton plays a crucial role in researching the evolution of all humanity. 

Subsequently, our heroine’s work was recognized as the best book, with bestseller status in 1996. The novel was published not in Canada alone but also Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The second work

Later our heroine began to work on her second novel, The Continuation of Love by Other Means. In this work, the author undertakes a study of gender conflict using the example of a father-daughter relationship who lived in an Argentine city during the period of the Dirty War.

The novel first came out in 2003 and was very favorably received by critics.

The third work

In her third novel, The Mercy Journals, Claudia brought up no less an important topic. As critics later wrote, the author tried to draw a parallel between the global and personal crises on the example of one soldier, which she succeeded remarkably well. 

The writer also raised the topic of morality, posing the question of whether it should remain unchanged or whether it needs to adapt to each period of humanity’s life.

Author’s viewpoint

According to the writer herself, all of her novels are “a trio about our species: evolution, reproduction and war – light topics, every one.”