Where's the Great Canadian Political Novel?

The Canadian political congruence of an NDP policy convention and a Liberal party leadership coronation have started me thinking about political novels.

I must confess that I am something of a political junkie and have spent a good bit of my adult life, soldiering away on one campaign or another.  The nitty-gritty of political organizing fascinates me, and heaven knows there can be high drama as well as very high stakes in campaigns.

Yet there are rather few novels that use politics and politicians as  backdrops.  Primary Colors about the 1992 US Presidential election is a rare successful one, to my mind.  Written by insider Joe Klein as "Anonymous," it contains lots of steamy inter-personal relationships, but also much about the way that true-believers try to convince voters that their man is the right one for the job. 

Another, far more disdainful, look at the political process is The Suffrage of Elvira by V.S. Naipaul.  It takes place during one of the first post-colonial elections in Trinidad, and is marked by Naipaul's trademark deep skepticism about humanity.

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren depicts the rise and fall of a Southern politician very much like Louisana's Huey Long.  It is, wrote Orville Prescott in The New York Times original review: "no book to curl up with in a hammock, but a book to read until 3 o'clock in the morning, a book to read on trains and subways, while waiting for street cars and appointments, while riding elevators or elephants."  The book was published in 1946, and many of its social givens have changed (the place of African-Americans in society is just one) but the way its hero goes off track resonates today.

But where are the Canadian political novels?  There are Heather Robertson's trilogy centered on William Lyon McKenzie King, Willie: A Romance, Lily: A Rhapsody in Red and Igor: A Novel of Intrigue, all published in the 1980s by Lorimer.  The first volume, by the way, has Talbot Papineau as a character. He was a young, attractive lawyer who might have done great things, had he not been killed in World War I. 

Given the current politucal context, one should note hat Justin Trudeau played Talbot Papineau in the 2006 television movie The Great War. (That's him in costume to the right.)  Don't know if either Tom Mulcair or Stephen Harper have appeared in any film, other than a documentary or two.  And are they in anybody's novel?  Probably only time will tell.

(For those who are interested: I'll add that someone who is very much like Lucien Bouchard appears in my novel Endangered Species, while Brian Mulroney and his friends are featured in my The Violets of Usambara.)