Robert's most recent novel, A Suitable Companion for the End of Your Life, is published by Coach House Books. A darkly comic take on the dystopian plague narrative, it probes our anxieties around borders, whether territorial or bodily, and our fraught desire not to die alone.

Robert’s first novel, The Mysteries, was named one of the top five Canadian fiction books of the year by Quill & Quire. His second novel, Once We Had a Country, was named a book of the year by reviewers in the National Post and the Montreal Gazette. In his book The Treacherous Imagination: Intimacy, Ethics, and Autobiographical Fiction, he discusses the ethics of authors writing fiction based on their loved ones' lives. In War Is Here: The Vietnam War and Canadian Literature, he examines the war's influence on Canadian writing and identity from the 1960s to the present day.

Robert's short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Dublin Review, Hazlitt, and The Journey Prize Anthology. His nonfiction has appeared in the National Post, The Toronto Star, The Walrus, and The Writer's Chronicle, as well as on CBC Radio One. He is currently writing a novel drawing on his experiences with disability.