The best of a new generation of Quebec storytellers. Surprising novels in flawless translation.
The Lelarge family quietly runs its little seafood empire from Quebec’s North Shore. But when an elegant visitor is dispatched by a mysterious Japanese conglomerate to their isolated fishing village, things will never be the same again. Because Mori Ishikawa has a secret invention: Ori. And it’s destined to change the course of human history.
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From village gossips, tealeaf-reading exotic dancers, and Acadian red herrings to soothsaying winkles and centuries-old curses, Rosa’s Very Own Personal Revolution is a delightful, boundary-pushing story about stories and the storytellers who make them – and a reminder that revolutions in Quebec don’t always go quietly.
WINNER — Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation
“Peter McCambridge’s translation, Rosa’s Very Own Personal Revolution, brilliantly renders Éric Dupont’s vibrant literary universe and rollicking story of an innocent young woman from the Gaspé Peninsula catapulted into turn-of-the-millenium Montréal. This rare feat of literary translation is a seamless, highly readable and wonderfully inventive work in its own right.”
—Peer assessment committee: Melissa Bull, Bilal Hashmi and Pablo Strauss
Vincent returns from Montreal to Tokyo, where his lover has passed away in tragic circumstances. So begins a sensual and disturbing tale of love and grief, of foxes, artists, and taxidermy, somewhere between the Sumida River, the Tsukiji fish market, and a contemporary art gallery.
Brault flirts with magical realism and ghostly Japanese tropes beneath the bright city lights, as Vincent loses his bearings to the Tokyo tremors and goes in search of the ghost of Suzuko.
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In these 12 short stories, scurrying insects and luminous jellyfish reveal a predatory world of childhood fairy tales, lurking shadows, and unrelenting fevers. Individuals are swallowed up by cities and bogs in a celebration of nature and humanity, in all their terrifying glory. Throughout, Clerson draws—and blurs—the lines between man and beast, life and death, as characters strive to see out the night.
We’re never quite sure what made Chloé take a flight to an unnamed country in South America. This series of short vignettes provides a glimpse of her scattered thoughts as she attempts to adjust to life in a new setting. Amidst the quirky observational humour of her internal monologue, a story of loneliness emerges, as she tries to form meaningful connections in her new surroundings.
Set in London, Bilbao, Alabama, Montauk, and more, this fresh, international novel weaves the fates of two unlikely friends whose days and nights are filled with movies and music, sleeping pills and shooting stars. A beautiful piece of magical realism with a modern, existential twist.
September 2008. Alice is 34, a Quebec artist working in London, England. During her residency there, Lehman Brothers, where her friend Laurence works, goes bankrupt. And that same evening, she attends an auction by Damien Hirst. Gregory Monroe, an art collector and hedge fund manager, is also at the auction—and their lives will never be the same again.
As the financial crisis strikes and two worlds collide, this love story explores the darkest corners of the contemporary art scene, the global economy, and two broken hearts.
A yarn to rival the best of them, a big fat whopper of a tall tale that bounces around from provincial Rivière-du-Loup in 1919 to Nagasaki, 1990s Berlin, Rome, and beyond. Funny, touching, and unpredictable, this is the story of a century—long and glorious, stuffed full of parallels, repeating motifs, and unforgettable characters—with the passion and plotting of a modern-day Tosca.
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Available worldwide (outside Canada) from HarperVia
Eric Dupont’s books are among the first in a wave of new Quebec literature: La Presse has called him “one of the province’s most daring and original writers,” while Voir maintains that just two books were enough to make his work “essential reading for anyone interested in new Quebec literature.” On the back of Dupont’s success with Canadian bestseller and Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Songs for the Cold of Heart, QC Fiction is proud to publish this special second edition of our very first book, now featuring a foreword by Heather O’Neill.
A surprise return home triggers a chain of events, their strands weaving together a sinister web of dreams and reality, truth and lies, secrets and spells.
Following in the tradition of Fortier’s absurdist first novel, The Unknown Huntsman, this is a dark and offbeat tale about lost love, lost dreams, and one lost limb.
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Winter blankets Montreal, while a bookseller and her lover dream of Prague. As the narrator’s open marriage becomes the subject of a novel, reality blurs with fiction, and she tries to reconcile the need to create with the desire for love and sex. Written in stark, spare prose, Prague is an introspective and intimate account of the making of a novel from life.
Explosions: Michael Bay and the Pyrotechnics of the Imagination is something completely different, a reimagining of Michael Bay as a cinematic genius in an action comedy of a novel that features an allstar cast (Michael Bay, Meatloaf, Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer, Plato, etc.). Zany and irreverent, it’s a satire-ridden medley of fact and fiction, an epic inside joke for those up on their ’90s pop culture and Philosophy 101.
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Excess and adventure abound as fresh, original writing draws us in to “surreal, hostile worlds.” We meet the leech-boys, a wooden puppet the brothers drag from the sea to become a member of the family, six pig-children, and more, all conveyed in a tone that lies somewhere between delirium and a disturbing dream.
The local and the universal come together in these 37 short stories, brought into English by 37 different translators from all over the world.
The result gives readers a flavour of the fresh new writing coming out of Quebec—and a reminder that there are at least 37 different ways to translate an author’s voice.
Teeming with life, Morel uncovers a story of Montreal that has been buried under years of glitzy urban renewal and modernization. This intricately constructed literary novel is a profoundly human portrait of one man and his time, a monument to a city, and a toast to days gone by.
“Morel is the most flawless and spirited working class saga that you’ll have the pleasure to read this year.” Olivier Boisvert, Libraire Gallimard
Pre-order now; free shipping in North America (pub date 1 June 2024)
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A boarding school deep in the forest carries the echoes of its past inhabitants. Hints of a disturbing history and the unfolding events of the present are refracted by the multiple voices of the girls who now live within its walls, their suggestive and enigmatic accounts interweaving in a rich and unsettling chorus.
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It’s a long way from a basement apartment in a Montreal suburb to a new life on a fictional planet, but that’s the destination our unnamed narrator has set his sights on, bringing readers with him on an off-beat and often hilarious journey.
Along the way, he writes poems, buys groceries at the dollar store, and earns minimum wage at a dead-end supermarket job. In between treatments for his cystic fibrosis and the constant drip-drip-drip of disappointment, he dreams of a new life on Tatouine, where he’ll play Super Mario Bros and make sand angels all day. But in the meantime, he’ll have to make do with daydreams of a better life.
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While on vacation with her family in Valencia, Claire Halde witnesses a shocking event that becomes the catalyst for a protracted downward spiral and a profound personal unravelling as she struggles to come to grips with her role in the incident.
This haunting novel, which unfolds across three timelines set in as many decades, takes the reader on a dark journey through the minds of three women whose pasts, presents, and futures are decided by a single encounter on a scorching summer afternoon.
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Émile Claudel is no ordinary child. Only months after his birth, following the liberation of France in 1945, he can already chatter away in several languages, much to his mother’s frustration. Nicknamed the Little Fox for his appearance, Émile is born into a loveless home, where patience is in short supply. Abandoned by his family, he struggles to find a place in society. This deftly written coming-of-age novel follows Émile on his journey toward adulthood, as his country moves away from austere conservatism and embraces the counterculture of the 1960s.
A man loses his daughter while swimming one summer. This little gem of a novella–sad and beautiful and spellbinding all at once–is the tale of how he strives to be reunited with her again, whether back home on dry land or thousands of miles underwater. Racked with guilt and doubt, he lingers over her memory, refusing to let her go. He imagines and reimagines the moment she slipped away from him as he searches for her behind every rock, in every bush, in every wave.
Why must one man perish while another survives? How does losing a sibling at birth affect life? And what are the chances that a fish lost and a cat found will bring our two protagonists together? This sweeping tale of intertwined destinies takes the reader from present-day Montreal to war-torn Italy and back again, with a gruelling march through the frozen Eastern Front of World War II along the way. All the while, secrets burn behind every pair of eyes we meet.
There’s no shortage of intrigue in this offbeat debut novel by Jean-Michel Fortier: an unnamed village, a strange and anonymous narrator, an unsolved murder, a mysterious huntsman, and a wisdom tooth extraction gone terribly wrong.
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