Why have so many of this century's prominent political and literary critics wanted to find a single metaphor to describe the character of Canada? Why do so many use land-based metaphors to ask about the divisions between centres and margins, colony and empire, wealth and power? W.H. New, in Land Sliding: Imagining Space, Presence, and Power in Canadian Writing, investigates this established paradigm by examining why so many writers have accepted the land as a comprehensive image of nationhood. Is there in fact, he questions, a landscape which is 'natural, ' unmediated by social...