Buying on Time Again

by Antanas Sileika

2025 • Short Stories

A revised and expanded edition of the beloved collection.

Narrated by the middle child of an East European family who fled to a Toronto suburb after the war, Antanas Sileika’s esteemed collection could be about any Canadian family in the ’50s and ’60s — if they had an outhouse on their suburban lot and lived underground while plotting revenge on their English-speaking neighbours. Together, these touching, hilarious stories make up a powerful chronicle of a place and a time, a close-knit community, and most of all, a family: three boys, a long-suffering mother, and a strangely lovable pipe-smoking, English-mangling father.

First published in 1997, when it was a finalist for the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Toronto Book Award, Buying on Time has become a favourite of Canadian readers and a staple of this country’s immigrant fiction. Now updated and featuring a previously uncollected story, Buying on Time Again is sure to move and delight a whole new generation.

"Welds humour, tragedy, and personal embarrassments we all live through in a colourful and memorable way."—The Globe and Mail