What is the main message of this year’s Giller Prize list?

English Canadian fiction is vibrantly alive and straddling the globe.

While UK literature seems spellbound by its own insular past, and US literature favours introspective agonizing, Canadian writing is confidently tackling worldwide settings and themes -- and doing so with creative panache and literary skill.

All four of the novels in the 2012 Giller list are set partly abroad and partly in Canada, and all four authors handle the foreign settings powerfully. This is especially true for "Ru," the lyrical memoir of Vietnam childhood and exile by Kim Thuy. But in "419," Will Ferguson also writes superbly about Nigeria; Alix Ohlin has a searing segment in "Inside" that is set in Rwanda; and Nancy Richler in "The Imposter Bride" treats eastern Poland and Israel skillfully as well as Montreal and Thunder Bay.

Compare this with the UK, where Hilary Mantel has just been awarded her second Booker Prize for "Bring Up the Bodies," another historical novel about Thomas Cromwell. Or the US, where recent Pulitzer Prize winners have been "Olive Kitteridge," a wonderful probing of a small-town Maine teacher by Elizabeth Strout(2009,) and "Tinkers," Paul Harding’s death-bed dreams of a New England merchant-farmer(2010.) Neither book notices the wider world.

The contrast with Canada’s global perspective is striking.

It is also exciting to see a new generation emerging of Canadian authors. This is a second novel for Alix Ohlin, for instance, who was born in 1972; "Ru" is Kim Thuy’s first novel; Nancy Richler and Will Ferguson have both written more previous novels, but both their books are very special this time. Russell Wangersky’s short story collection "Whirl Away" is also on the 2012 list.

I am very impressed with all five of this year’s books -- unlike previous years, when two or three books were excellent (in my view,) and others less deserving. This high quality, though, makes it more difficult to argue which single book should win!

The Wangersky volume, for instance, is very powerful in its vivid writing about the marginal and excluded in Canadian society -- even if I find it hard to support short stories as the Giller winner. Richler’s novel, too, I find a probing exploration of rejection and its impact even though there are depths of character than I wish had been more fully analyzed.

The three remaining books have all had a powerful impact on me. The novel that is the most emotionally powerful for me, with the most authentic and original voice, is "Ru;" as one horizon merges into another in the writing, and the poetry traps you, this book in the end overwhelms you. For sheer force of story-telling, though, the most dramatic book is "419;" and there is a deeper reality, related to family, to love, to obligation and to honesty, that this book treats -- even if I have some questions about how the perspectives of some of the Nigerian characters are handled. In terms of character development, finally, my preference goes to "Inside;" this novel is well-written, but what matters most about this book is the depth of character shaped and probed, ranging across genders and generations, with rare sensitivity and insight.

From the perspective of Canadian literature, of course, this diverse quality is excellent. In choosing a single winner, though, it creates a dilemma. In the end, I look, above all, for emotional intensity and authenticity in the fiction that I read -- so, for me, my Giller vote would go to Kim Thuy.