“This book is so strangely moving and truly funny and sad and beautiful. An impressive debut from a writer already in possession of a unique voice.”

—Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, and A Complicated Kindness

“Bruce and Dougie are conjoined twins—one a fiery boxer, the other a dreamy bookkeeper. Inseparable by birth but diverging in desire, they share a body, a home, and a tangled history of longing—for solitude, for love, for a different kind of life. A deeply intimate, character-driven novel about family, yearning, and the aching complexity of connection, The Pugilist and the Sailor is a story of bodies that defy definition, and the invisible lines that bind us—through time, through blood, and through the stories we carry.”

—Carrianne Leung, author of That Time I Loved You and The Wondrous Woo

“Joining half a dozen plot lines and even more characters, The Pugilist and the Sailor bursts with whimsy and humanity. Ragbar treats even the briefest character appearances with care.”

—Catherine Marcotte, Literary Review of Canada

“You love your brother? Try sharing a limb with him. In one of the most tender and affecting debut novels you’re likely to read this year, The Pugilist and the Sailor delves into the lives of a pair of 30-something-year-old conjoined Torontonian twins. Guyanese-Canadian Ragbar pulls off something so convincing and exquisitely-judged in her portrayals of boxing aficionado Dougie and stoic, would-be seafarer Bruce that it’s disappointing to concede they aren’t actual people.”

—Shivanee Ramlochan, Caribbean Beat

“An accomplished debut novel with rich characterization and a compelling narrative voice. Recommended.”

—Lucy E.M. Black, The Miramichi Reader

Finalist, 2026 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize