What do you think?
Rate this book
My Thievery of the People: Short Stories
From the highways of Cairo to the outports of Newfoundland, the soul-crushing cubicles of Montreal city work and the deceptive perils of the Quebec countryside, these brilliant short stories lay bare the workings of power and the small acts of both courage and compromise by which those on the margins defy them.
Marshy’s distinctive style and untamed strength guides the reader in an electrifying high-wire act through the inner lives of refugees, queers in love and grief, wives, workers, and so many others fighting their way out from under.
Beautifully cohesive across a stunning depth and range of setting and subject, no one is innocent in My Thievery of the People.
Leila Marshy is of Palestinian-Newfoundland parentage, which explains a lot. During the First Intifada, she worked for the Palestinian Mental Health Association in Gaza, and Medical Aid for Palestine in Montreal. Her first novel, The Philistine, was published in 2018 and in French in 2021. She lives in Montreal.
PRAISE
“Tightly woven, electric, exciting, and rooted deeply in place, Marshy’s stories depict the everyday life of a host of a Cairo daughter daunted by her brother’s return, a paranoid Montreal snow plow driver, a Russian “knife guy” working at a circus in Las Vegas, an Egyptian waiter serving a tourist family on a boat, a mysterious Quebecois beekeeper off the side of the road. Emotionally unpredictable and incredibly immediate, Marshy’s voice is both stark and like a pulsing half-dream, caught between reality and something else. Each story left me wondering but not dissatisfied, curious to know what the next story would bring. An excellent follow-up to her wonderful debut, The Philistine.” ––Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, The Good Arabs (Winner of the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal, 2022)
“A household in a Montreal suburb suffused with marital tension, a dusty village in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, a mysteriously archaic travelling My Thievery is a delightfully engrossing and awe-inspiring collection that transports us from the mundane to the exotic and spaces in between, all in the service of the sort of satisfying, trend-defying morality tales in which the consequences of our choices can include death––or at least retribution.” –– Anita Anand, A Convergence of Solitudes
Marshy’s distinctive style and untamed strength guides the reader in an electrifying high-wire act through the inner lives of refugees, queers in love and grief, wives, workers, and so many others fighting their way out from under.
Beautifully cohesive across a stunning depth and range of setting and subject, no one is innocent in My Thievery of the People.
Leila Marshy is of Palestinian-Newfoundland parentage, which explains a lot. During the First Intifada, she worked for the Palestinian Mental Health Association in Gaza, and Medical Aid for Palestine in Montreal. Her first novel, The Philistine, was published in 2018 and in French in 2021. She lives in Montreal.
PRAISE
“Tightly woven, electric, exciting, and rooted deeply in place, Marshy’s stories depict the everyday life of a host of a Cairo daughter daunted by her brother’s return, a paranoid Montreal snow plow driver, a Russian “knife guy” working at a circus in Las Vegas, an Egyptian waiter serving a tourist family on a boat, a mysterious Quebecois beekeeper off the side of the road. Emotionally unpredictable and incredibly immediate, Marshy’s voice is both stark and like a pulsing half-dream, caught between reality and something else. Each story left me wondering but not dissatisfied, curious to know what the next story would bring. An excellent follow-up to her wonderful debut, The Philistine.” ––Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, The Good Arabs (Winner of the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal, 2022)
“A household in a Montreal suburb suffused with marital tension, a dusty village in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, a mysteriously archaic travelling My Thievery is a delightfully engrossing and awe-inspiring collection that transports us from the mundane to the exotic and spaces in between, all in the service of the sort of satisfying, trend-defying morality tales in which the consequences of our choices can include death––or at least retribution.” –– Anita Anand, A Convergence of Solitudes
161 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 21, 2025
2 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Leila Marshy
3 books28 followersAuthor of The Philistine (LLP, 2018), My Thievery of the People (Baraka Books, 2025), and Razing Palestine: Punishing Solidarity and Dissent in Canada (Baraka Books, 2025), Leila Marshy's Palestinian father was exiled from his home in 1948, never to return. During the First Intifada, Marshy lived in Cairo and worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent and the Palestinian Mental Health Association. She has been a journalist, a baker, a chicken farmer, a graphic designer, and a community & political organizer. In 2011 she founded a groundbreaking group in Montreal that brought the Hasidic community together in dialogue with their neighbours. Her stories and journalism has been published in Canadian and American media. She lives in Montreal.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 22, 2025
A good, if not a little uneven collection from Leila Marshy. Her previously published novel, The Philistine, is worth checking out.
July 28, 2025
First I'd like to say that this is an exceptional collection. I would have liked to give it a 4.5 rating, but unfortunately it's not possible on this site.
In this short story collection, Leila Marshy brings a sculptors precision, or should I say a surgeon's knife, to the craft. In interviews, she has emphasized editing, editing, editing, and yes, that shows here. (By the way, I don't agree with this idea that the spare, lean and mean story is the only way to go. It seems to dominate Canadian literary discourse. But I do believe that it's certainly one good way to go.)
The stories have range -- thematic, stylistic and geographic. I really felt that I was inside the skin of some of the characters, not a comfortable experience, but one that defines great writing. This was particularly true for three male protagonists -- a physically ugly father, a knife-yielding circus performer and a man employed as a snow plower in a remote, "up-North" Canadian town.
Some of the female characters act in subversive ways to counter power abuse. I have read that subversion is one of the few" powers" that the victimized have, and this notion is well illustrated in this volume. I could almost see Marshy going "gotcha" as they won their small and sometimes big victories! The dynamics of power, at various levels, manifested in various ways, is a central, and very well executed theme, in My Thievery of the People.
Now for the quibbles. For me, the first story, or rather a sketch of a twisted interaction between two women, did not work. And I felt that an otherwise powerful story of a romantic relationship between two women (and much else besides) was resolved in a rather predictable way. This particularly struck out for a writer as bold, even audacious, as Marshy.
But these are minor scratches on an otherwise polished and powerful work.
In this short story collection, Leila Marshy brings a sculptors precision, or should I say a surgeon's knife, to the craft. In interviews, she has emphasized editing, editing, editing, and yes, that shows here. (By the way, I don't agree with this idea that the spare, lean and mean story is the only way to go. It seems to dominate Canadian literary discourse. But I do believe that it's certainly one good way to go.)
The stories have range -- thematic, stylistic and geographic. I really felt that I was inside the skin of some of the characters, not a comfortable experience, but one that defines great writing. This was particularly true for three male protagonists -- a physically ugly father, a knife-yielding circus performer and a man employed as a snow plower in a remote, "up-North" Canadian town.
Some of the female characters act in subversive ways to counter power abuse. I have read that subversion is one of the few" powers" that the victimized have, and this notion is well illustrated in this volume. I could almost see Marshy going "gotcha" as they won their small and sometimes big victories! The dynamics of power, at various levels, manifested in various ways, is a central, and very well executed theme, in My Thievery of the People.
Now for the quibbles. For me, the first story, or rather a sketch of a twisted interaction between two women, did not work. And I felt that an otherwise powerful story of a romantic relationship between two women (and much else besides) was resolved in a rather predictable way. This particularly struck out for a writer as bold, even audacious, as Marshy.
But these are minor scratches on an otherwise polished and powerful work.
November 1, 2025
Unlike other short story collections like Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Junot Díaz’s Drown, or Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street, where the stories revolve around recurring characters and common settings, Marshy’s collection brings together a wide variety of characters from distinctly different places, backgrounds, and walks of life which makes this collection an interesting standout in the variety that it delivers.
What really sets this collection apart, though, is its focus on the dynamics of class, colonialism, and gender. Marshy approaches these themes with finesse, avoiding the trap of heavy-handed propaganda. Instead, the stories are infused with a gently cynical humor that is both psychologically astute and empathetic.
What really sets this collection apart, though, is its focus on the dynamics of class, colonialism, and gender. Marshy approaches these themes with finesse, avoiding the trap of heavy-handed propaganda. Instead, the stories are infused with a gently cynical humor that is both psychologically astute and empathetic.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews