Words on pages.

All the Shining People

Twelve exquisitely written stories depicting a search for human connection and an attempt to fit in far from home.

All the Shining People explores migration, diaspora, and belonging within Toronto’s Jewish South African community, as individuals come to terms with the oppressive hierarchies that separate, and the connections that bind. Seeking a place to belong, the book’s characters — including a life-drawing model searching the streets for her lover; a woman confronting secrets from her past in the new South Africa; and a man grappling with the legacy of his father, a former political prisoner — crave authentic relationships that replicate the lost feeling of home. With its focus on family, culture, and identity, All the Shining People captures the experience of immigrants and outsiders with honesty, subtlety, and deep sympathy.

Read an excerpt

House of Anansi Press | 2022

Now available in paperback, e-book, and **audiobook** formats.
On sale in Canada through your local independent bookstore, **Indigo**, and **Amazon**.
On sale in the US through your favourite local bookstore, **bookshop.org**, and **Amazon**.

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The precision of Friedman's writing, and the life she breathes into her characters, is the mark of a major talent. All the Shining People never ceases to sparkle.
— Sue Carter, Brian Francis, and Thea Lim, judges for the 2023 Trillium Book Award
Surprising, compassionate, and insightful, these memorable tales are both intimate and political, with vivid characters searching for connection and a sense of belonging…. This is an honest and sophisticated collection.
— Cynthia Holz, Sally Ito, and Jack Wang, judges for the 2022 Danuta Gleed Literary Award
Kathy Friedman takes a stirring, up-close look at where our many identities intersect in this short-story collection … Deeply moving.
—Apple Books
In a dozen loosely connected short stories, [Kathy Friedman] weaves a colourful and rich tapestry of the community — and does so masterfully … While the individual tales shine on their own, each is enriched by the ones that follow, forming a beautiful constellation of work.
― Canadian Jewish News
In these refined, sophisticated stories, characters mingle and interact, sometimes aware of one another, sometimes not. All the Shining People, like real life, often takes you places you absolutely didn’t expect to go.
— Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander and Ridgerunner
In these nuanced and inventive stories of connection, identity, disappointment, and love, Friedman explores how we find ourselves in history, living our particular cultural narratives with all their charm, difficulty, and contradiction. With compassion, insight and understanding, she asks, how — living in the diaspora of self — can we find our way home? … All the Shining People finds the universal in the local, and it shines.
— Gary Barwin, author of Yiddish for Pirates
A smart and adventurous collection of stories that makes visible the South African Jewish diaspora in Toronto. Reminiscent of David Bezmozgis’s Natasha and Other Stories, Friedman’s characters are vivid, desperate, and self-aware. She writes them beautifully. These are subtle stories that simultaneously make the world feel large.
— Catherine Bush, author of Blaze Island
Remarkable in its scope and its multiplicity of voices, All the Shining People is a dazzling debut from an immensely talented writer. With astonishing compassion and insight, Kathy Friedman has conceived a cast of characters so real they leap off the page. These exquisite stories reveal the fragilities of human connection and our desperate need for redemption. This is a stunningly assured collection that is at once fiercely political and intensely intimate, darkly comic, and devastating.
—Ayelet Tsabari, author of The Art of Leaving
Powerful and haunting, Kathy Friedman’s characters leap off the page with their journey for belonging. In these stories, people search for connection in community, in their cities, and within their own families, while at the same time juggling the question: Where do I come from? Friedman’s sharp voice and keen attention to detail will reel you in and never let you go.
—Sidura Ludwig, author of You Are Not What We Expected
Kathy Friedman’s glowing narratives and polished prose thoroughly impress as they shift from South Africa to envelop the Don Valley. And her characters’ emotions — so elegantly spotlighted and revealed — truly leave their mark. Surprising, inventive, and delightfully connected, All the Shining People is a moving debut.
—Derek Mascarenhas, author of Coconut Dreams
A stunning and masterful collection. I found myself torn between devouring the book in a single sitting and savouring slowly to prolong the magic. True to its name, these stories so beautifully capture the prismatic ways humans illuminate, whether through life-changing kindnesses like seeing those who feel invisible or the harsh light of having one’s flaws suddenly come into focus. In a pointillistic fashion, each story simultaneously offers a profound glimpse of the Jewish diaspora experience while contributing to larger themes like the inherent tension of trying to belong anywhere, both geographically and spiritually.
—Leesa Dean, author of Waiting for the Cyclone
“A cubist collage in transition which captures the dynamics of contemporary Jewish Diaspora … Betwixt and between, neither here nor there, Friedman’s characters shine.”
—The Miramichi Reader