David Bergen

David Bergen is a Canadian novelist whose fiction repeatedly returns to faith, family, moral uncertainty, and life in Manitoba. A Year of Lesser, his 1996 debut novel, received the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book. The Retreat, published in 2008, places a troubled family near Kenora during the 1970s and earned both the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and another McNally Robinson Book of the Year honor. A Winnipeg novelist, Bergen sets the later book around a wilderness commune and nearby Anishinaabe life. His earlier fiction, including A Year of Lesser, established the close moral observation that continued across his career. Bergen favors close attention over simple judgment, setting private decisions against communities shaped by belief and history. His career also includes the Giller Prize-winning The Time in Between, confirming the broader literary context in which the two earlier titles belong.