Description

MARCH 2025.

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 might explain a lot. She has worked for the Palestine Hospital in Cairo, the Palestinian Mental Health Association in Gaza, and Medical Aid for Palestine in Montreal. She founded a ground-breaking community group bringing Hasidim and their neighbours together for dialogue. She’s been a baker, a chicken farmer, an early mobile app designer, a film editor and a political campaigner. Her stories, poetry and articles have appeared in journals, newspapers, magazines and anthologies. Her first novel, The Philistine, was published in 2018. She lives in Montreal.

REVIEWS & PRAISE

“With My Thievery of the People, Marshy establishes herself as a masterful writer of intricate, intergenerational plots. (…) By turns cynical and tender, My Thievery of the People breaks the complacency of the everyday through shock, satire, and the gravitas of subtext.” Shafia Hafiz Ramji, Literary Review of Canada

“Probably my favourite short story collection of the year, so far, My Thievery of the People: Stories is imbued with qualities both folkloric and darkly magical, as well as violent and adamantly political, featuring heroines aplenty.” Thalia Stopa, Scout Magazine

“My Thievery of the People helps us believe 2025 might not be that bad after all, and that big tech and other power structures should fear us. Marshy’s figures of power are fundamentally fragile and could crumble in the face of disaster, or fate, or chance.”
Léa Murat-Ingles, Montreal Review of Books

“Tightly woven, electric, exciting, and rooted deeply in place, Marshy’s stories depict the everyday life of a host of characters: 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)

“Powerful, compelling and trend-defying morality tales rendered in astonishing, cinematic prose.”
–– Anita Anand, A Convergence of Solitudes