Québec Reads helps bring the best of Québec literature to the English-speaking world with weekly r
New on Québec Reads this week: We're excited to feature a sneak peek from LIKE ANIMALS by Eve Lemieux, translated by Cayman Rock and forthcoming from Dundurn Press in 2022.
quebecreads.medium.com/?p=3b854eba92b6
"Red hair bounces along the hall. Tania, my best friend, is looking for me. Tania, I’m sorry, I’m exhausted, I’m a hot mess, Tania."
Congrats to all the authors who are finalists for the Rendez-vous du premier roman award for an outstanding first novel.
Join us for the launch of the summer issue of Montreal Review of Books launch celebration in over a year! For details: bit.ly/3h18nKs
Christopher DiRaddo is the author of two novels: The Family Way and The Geography of Pluto. Since 2014, he has worked to create a space for LGBTQ literature in Montreal—producing and hosting the Violet Hour reading series and book club.
Montreal and other Quebec settings have played prominent roles in books by Louise Penny, Kaie Kellough and others.
"If a woman falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear her, how do we know if she needs saving?"
New this week on Québec Reads:
Natalia Hero translates an excerpt from
GRAND HUIT
by Ève Landry
La maison en feu, 2020
by Ève Landry
Québec has demonstrated its ‘vitality and robustness,’ says Sébastien Lefebvre of Québec Édition in Publishing Perspectives
Book publishing in Québec had a strong year in 2020, despite the pandemic, with with sales of local books up 11 percent in December. (Sponsored)
Congrats to all the books with Quebec connections on today's Canada Reads 2021 longlist:
Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie, translated by Arielle Aaronson for House of Anansi
Dirty Birds by Morgan Murray, which is set in Montreal, published by Breakwater Books
The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O'Neill, published by HarperCollins Canada
Tatouine by Jean-Christophe Réhel, translated by Katherine Hastings and Peter McCambridge for QC Fiction, an imprint of Baraka Books
Wendy, Master of Art by Walter Scott, published by Drawn & Quarterly
https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/here-is-the-canada-reads-2021-longlist-1.5860927
by André Forget
Québec literature continues to make a name for itself around the world! NIRLIIT from La Peuplade is in El País this week.
En ‘Nirliit’, la autora quebequesa Juliana Léveillé-Trudel retrata con lirismo la vida de este grupo indígena, muy marcada por los extremos
New this week: Mary O'Connor translates an excerpt from LES PEAUX CASSÉES by Richard Dallaire (Éditions Alto)
"A few nights every month, the authorities carried out horrifying purges. They locked down neighborhoods that were hardest hit by the drying up and erected scaffolding where guillotines dispatched a portion of each superfluous individual."
by Richard Dallaire, translated by Mary O’Connor
What does it take to be a good translator? "You need instinct, empathy, sensitivity, passion, and dispassion. You need a thick skin, a good ear, a strong gut, and fingers that can fly like the wind. You need humility and chutzpah. You need to be ready to defend your choices, particularly your punctuation. Because people get incensed about punctuation. One would think they had been beaten about the head with semi-colons or mugged by a roving gang of em dashes. You need to meander, read comic books, read cookbooks, listen to languages you don't understand, and be an avid reader of packaging. You need to find poetry in the banal, you need to defend your punctuation some more, and you need to kill your darlings."
from Rhonda Mullins' funny, entertaining, and on-the-money contribution to "Culture in Transit: Translating the Literature of Quebec" from Véhicule Press
New this week: literary translator David Warriner on translating Roxanne Bouchard for Orenda Books, French-speaking Swedish detectives, Jólabókaflóð & so much more!
quebecreads.medium.com/interview-with-literary-translator-david-warriner-cd76998bb19
Congrats to all the finalists for this year's Prix des libraires du Québec!
The Coral Bride-Book of the Day
Orenda Books
“A haunting murder mystery about how human nature is every bit as dangerous and inscrutable as the sea.”
https://buff.ly/2IzC6LW
New this week on Québec Reads:
“Late July in Split Landing,” a short story by Julie Bouchard, winner of the 2020 Prix de la nouvelle Radio-Canada (Les Prix de la création Radio-Canada)
Translated by Ann Marie Boulanger
"It turns out that today was the day — after two decades of reading the local, national, and international news, after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, after the typhoons, the tsunamis, and the mass shootings in the United States, after the ten years in power of Stephen Harper, the elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, the death of David Bowie, after the two hundred million migrants and the children separated from their parents at the Mexico–U.S. border — today was the day it hit her: that last-straw news item. The one that leaves you forehead pressed to a table, arms hanging limply by your sides, snot running from your nose, demolished, as a Springsteen tune plays in the background."
Translated by Ann Marie Boulanger
Well done to TÉNÈBRE, Paul Kawczak, and La Peuplade, flying the flag for Québec as finalists for this year's edition of the Prix des cinq continents!
Our review is coming soon!
And here is the list of all the finalists:
C'est beau la guerre de Youssouf Amine Elalamy (Maroc) aux éditions Le Fennec (Maroc)
Les Jours viennent et passent de Hemley Boum (Cameroun-France) aux éditions Gallimard (France)
Nafar de Mathilde Chapuis (France) aux éditions Liana Levi (France)
Otages de Nina Bouraoui (Algérie-France) aux éditions Lattès (France)
Rivage de la colère de Caroline Laurent (Maurice-France) aux éditions les Escales (France)
Rouge impératrice de Léonora Miano (Cameroun-France) aux éditions Grasset & Fasquelle (France)
Soie et métal de Tuyet Nga Nguyen (Vietnam-Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles) aux éditions Academia (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles)
Ténèbre de Paul Kawczak (France-Canada-Québec) aux éditions La Peuplade (Canada-Québec)
Tous tes enfants dispersés de Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse (Rwanda-France) aux éditions Autrement (France)
Un monstre est là, derrière la porte de Gaelle Belem (France-Réunion) aux éditions Gallimard (France)
In our ongoing celebration of Quebec literature in translation, this year we published Apple S, translated by Dimitri Nasrallah; Swallowed by Réjean Ducharme translated by Madeleine Stratford; and No Grave for This Place by Judy Quinn translated by Donald Winkler--in collaboration with Le Quartanier, Éditions Gallimard, and Éditions du Noroît. It also gave us great pleasure to bring back into print Culture in Transit: Translating the Literature of Quebec, in a new expanded & revised edition edited by Sherry Simon. What a year!
“The Lilac Trail,” an excerpt in translation from Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Eric Dupont now at quebecreads.com
Yvette Renard aged ten years in the space of a minute. She left Jean-Paul at the hospital morgue and trudged back to the boarding house where everyone was waiting for her, worried sick. It was past eight o’clock. She didn’t say a word when she came into the kitchen. She waited a good three minutes before opening her mouth.
https://medium.com//the-lilac-trail-an-excerpt-in-translation-from-scotiabank-giller-prize-finalist-eric-dupont-7c9465238b52
Huge congrats to Montreal publishers Véhicule Press and Drawn and Quarterly for making this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. No translations from Quebec on the list this year, but good to see Kaie Kellough's Dominoes at the Crossroads and Clyde Fans by Seth longlisted! Congrats to all the writers and publishers who made the cut!
Great to see Librairie Saint Henri Books in the Washington Post this morning in an article on ways to support your local bookstore during the pandemic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/08/23/people-want-support-their-local-bookstores-they-might-be-hurting-them-instead
As many well-meaning consumers flock to support local community bookstores, the increased demand on these small shops have put a strain on business owners.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the entire trilogy and was especially grateful for its rejection of most aspects of the conventional novel, but I also felt suspicious of an overarching cleverness that…
Happy Publication Day to The Neptune Room!
From the dynamic author/translator duo Bertrand Laverdure and Oana Avasilichioaei comes The Neptune Room. Originally published in French by Éditions La Peuplade as La Chambre Neptune, The Neptune Room is the latest title in our Literature in Translation Series.
As part of our celebration of Women in Translation Month, The Neptune Room (like all titles in our Literature in Translation Series) is currently on sale. Save 25% off until August 30th.
Learn more: https://bookhugpress.ca/shop/author/oana-avasilichioaei/the-neptune-room-by-bertrand-laverdure-translated-by-oana-avasilichioaei/
Our celebration of Women in Translation Month continues on the Book*hug Blog with another instalment in our In Conversation interview series. Today, we talk to Kristen Renee Miller, translator of Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill’s collection, Spawn.
A reminder that all titles in our Literature in Translation Series (including Spawn!) are 25% off until August 30th.
https://bookhugpress.ca/women-in-translation-kristen-renee-miller/
Today is August 12, Buy a Book From Québec Day. How about this excerpt from François Blais' DOCUMENT 1 (translated by JC Sutcliffe for Bookhug) for starters?
by François Blais
Today is August 12, Buy a Book From Québec Day. A shout-out to recent translations by Québec Reads contributors Arielle Aaronson, David Warriner & Peter McCambridge: AUTOPSY OF A BORING WIFE, THE CORAL BRIDE, THE LITTLE FOX OF MAYERVILLE.
Head to quebecreads.com for plenty more recommendations!
New this week:
On High Tides & Flights of Fancy: Juliette Gaudreault-Tremblay's interview with Jean-Christophe Réhel
by Juliette Gaudreault-Tremblay
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