How can a national literature in English-Canada be possible if Canadians cannot agree on who we are? This is the central question that Jonathan Kertzer 'worries' over in his book, Worrying the Nation: Imagining a National Literature in English Canada. The book is a critical fretting over the possibility of a national literature when the very idea of the nation as a viable conceptual/literary category has been called into question.

Kertzer begins the book with survey of three competing discourses - literature, nation, and history - and how they converge and diverge. He then...