East Village is a

fictional town This is a list of fictional settlements, including fictional towns, villages, and cities, organized by each city's medium. This list should include only well-referenced, notable examples of fictional towns, cities, settlements and villages that a ...

in the

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

province of

Manitoba Manitoba is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population ...

, frequently used as a setting in novels by

Miriam Toews Miriam Toews (; born 1964) is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including '' A Complicated Kindness'' (2004), '' All My Puny Sorrows'' (2014), and '' Women Talking'' (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governo ...

. The town was based on Toews's real-life hometown of Steinbach. East Village appears in ''

A Complicated Kindness ''A Complicated Kindness'' (2004) is the third novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews. The novel won the Governor General's Award for English Fiction, the CBA Libris Fiction Award, and CBC's ''Canada Reads''. Plot The novel is set in a small r ...

'' and ''

All My Puny Sorrows ''All My Puny Sorrows'' is the sixth novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. The novel won the 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2015 Folio Prize for Literature, and the 2015 ...

'' as well as the

film adaptation A film adaptation transfers the details or story of an existing source text, such as a novel, into a feature film. This transfer can involve adapting most details of the source text closely, including characters or plot points, or the original sou ...

of ''All My Puny Sorrows''. Toews also refers to Steinbach in ''Fight Night'' and her nonfiction work ''Swing Low''. Nomi Nickel, the teenaged protagonist of ''

'', lives in the small

Mennonite Mennonites are a group of Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian communities tracing their roots to the epoch of the Radical Reformation. The name ''Mennonites'' is derived from the cleric Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland, part of ...

town of East Village, Manitoba, but longs to live in the " real East Village" in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. She lives with her father in a bungalow on

Manitoba Highway 12 Provincial Trunk Highway 12 (PTH 12) is a provincial primary highway located in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. Lying entirely in the Eastman Region, it runs from the Canada–United States border, U.S. bor ...

, a real life highway that runs through Steinbach. While Steinbach has multiple churches, the fictional East Village is dominated by one conservative Mennonite church pastored by Hans "The Mouth" Rosenfeldt, the villain of the novel. East Village young people, according to Nomi Nickel, are banned from "media, dancing, smoking, temperate climates, movies, drinking, rock'n'roll, having sex for fun, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities or staying up past nine o'clock." East Village does have a movie theatre, although Nomi is forbidden from attending and, like the real Steinbach, has a

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

, and numerous car dealerships. The name East Village alludes to Steinbach's position as the eastern-most community of the

East Reserve The East Reserve was a block settlement in Eastman Region, Eastern Manitoba initially set aside by the Government of Canada exclusively for settlement by Russian Mennonite settlers in 1873 (although settlement did not occur until 1874). Most of ...

, a historically Mennonite block settlement. In 2024, a historic plaque was placed in front of Toews' teenage home in Steinbach, the real-life inspiration for the East Village bungalow referred to in her novels. Steinbach has also been fictionalized as Kleindarp by

Al Reimer Elmer E. 'Al' Reimer (1927–2015) was a Mennonite writer from Steinbach, Manitoba. Reimer was an important literary critic and writer in the emergence of southern Manitoba Mennonite literature during the 1970s and 80s. Born in Landmark, Manitoba ...

, Edenfeld by

Andrew Unger Andrew Unger (born November 8, 1979) is a Canadian novelist and satirist. He is the author of the satirical news website The Unger Review (formerly The Daily Bonnet), as well as the novel '' Once Removed'' and the collection ''The Best of the B ...

, and Rocky Creek by MaryLou Driedger.

References

Fictional populated places in Manitoba Manitoba in fiction {{Manitoba-stub Steinbach, Manitoba