Born during the Great Depression, Jean-Claude Morel is an Everyman, a Montreal construction worker whose hands have helped build the city he lives in. He has dug out its metro tunnels, shaped islands in the Saint-Laurent river, and built the expressways that wind through the city's core. But progress has come at a cost. Neighbourhoods are razed, streets cleared off the map, and the Morel family is expropriated.
Bristling with life, Morel unearths a story of Montreal long buried beneath years of dazzling urban renewal and modernization projects. This expertly crafted literary novela stylistic tour-de-forceis a profoundly human portrait of one man and his time, and a monument to his city.
Maxime Raymond Bock was born in Montreal, where he lives today. His first book, Atavismes, a collection of short stories, won the Prix Adrienne-Choquette It was pubished as Atavisms in 2015. The English translation of Bock's novella, Des lames de pierre, Baloney, appeared in 2016. Morel, his début novel, was awarded the prize for the Rendez-vous du premier roman in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Prix des libraires, the Prix littéraire des collégiennes, the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, and the Prix Senghor.
Melissa Bull is a Montreal translator, writer, and editor. Author of a collection of fiction, The Knockoff Eclipse, a collection of poetry, Rue, she has also translated Marie-Sissi Labrèche's novel, Borderline, Pascale Rafie's play, The Baklawa Recipe, and Nelly Arcan's collection, Burqa of Skin. She was the editor and translator of Maisonneuve magazine's Writing from Quebec column for a decade, and her fiction, essays, and interviews have been widely published.
One of the greatest Quebec novelists and short story writers of our time. Lettres québécoises (for their Fall 2022 issue dedicated to Maxime Raymond Bock's work)
Reviews
Morel is an astounding book QC Fiction is highly proficient at finding important books written in French and having them translated into English to reach a wider audience. Morel is no exception. It is a vital book, a mini epic of an ordinary man, and a time capsule of post-war Montreal with all its problems, economic, political, and environmental. I highly recommend this book to anyone, but those most familiar with the city and its neighbourhoods will get additional insights into Mr. Bock's Montreal. James Fisher, founding editor of The Miramichi Reader
The author's verb is [] as precise as the gestures he describes, as rich as the demons that agitate Morel, as teeming as the vanished neighbourhood. And it turns out to be unexpectedly beautiful: a deeply buried nugget of gold, freshly extracted, coated with earth, that suddenly begins to shine. Josée Boileau, Journal de Montréal
A novel, monumental and aerial at the same time. Philippe Manevy, Lettres Québécoises
The most flawless and spirited working-class saga you'll have the pleasure of reading this year. Olivier Boisvert, for Morel, Librairie Gallimard
Maxime Raymond Bock affirms, with Morel, his unique signature of erudition and humanity. Mario Cloutier, for Morel, La Presse
About Bock's work.
Praise for Baloney
[Bock's] deeply original writing always seeks out the mot juste, then sculpts them into sentences that describe the slightest variations of human emotions in spectacular complexity, harnessing the power of form, rhythm, and sound.
Mario Cloutier, La Presse
Bock is really stepping into a much older tradition. You can picture versions of Robert and his conflicted follower in the pages of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, George Gissing's New Grub Street, even Flaubert's A Sentimental Education. To this lineage, Bock brings something very much his own, and very much Quebec: Baloney is a touching character study, but it could also be read, if you're so inclined, as a parable for what became of a certain kind of cultural idealism. Bock hits a note that balances gentle mockery with genuine affection and laces it all with a perfectly sustained comic melancholy. Then he steps aside and leaves the reverberations to do their work. Yes, you'll read Baloney quickly. But you're highly unlikely to read it only once.
Ian McGillis, for Baloney, The Montreal Gazette
Praise for Atavisms:
Crackles with the energy of a Québécois folk song, impassioned and celebratory but also melancholy and cheekily ironic ... As in Bolaño's work, narrative itself is often the subject; stories are folded within other stories and narrators are constantly asserting their presence ... Like Bolaño, Bock alternates between rage, sorrow, protest, and dark comedy, and the two writers share a sense of urgencyof writing against time as much as about it.
Pasha Malla, for Atavisms, The New Yorker
Bock creates an impressive diversity of voices.
Andrew Irwin, for Atavisms, The Times Literary Supplement
Brothers is an original, phantasmagoric piece of fiction that is steeped in myth and fable. In a world of "gruesome, gargantuan creatures, two-headed fish, turtles with shells as big as islands, whales with mouths
so large they could consume entire cities," two brothers set out to find their dog of a father. The elder brother is missing an arm, while his younger brother has been fashioned by his mother from that arm. 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.
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.
The "we" narrator's rambling and often ironic musings are unsettling at first, and the atmosphere vaguely claustrophobic as the tale shifts back and forth between Monday meetings at the parish hall, where villagers air their petty complaints, and their Friday gatherings shrouded in secrecy and presided over by the enigmatic Professor. A bewitching story full of dark humour and laugh-out-loud absurdity.
Nadia Comaneci's gold-medal performance at the Olympic Games in Montreal is the starting point for a whole new generation. Eric Dupont watches the performance on TV, mesmerized. The son of a police officer (Henry VIII) and a professional cook-as he likes to remind us-he grows up in the depths of the Quebec countryside with a new address for almost every birthday and little but memories of his mother to hang on to. His parents have divorced, and the novel's narrator relates his childhood, comparing it to a family gymnastics performance worthy of Nadia herself.
Life in the court of Matane is unforgiving, and we explore different facets of it (dreams of sovereignty, schoolyard bullying, imagined missions to Russia, poems by Baudelaire), each based around an encounter with a different animal, until the narrator befriends a great horned owl, summons up the courage to let go of the upper bar forever, and makes his glorious escape.
Author
Born in 1970, Eric Dupont lives and works in Montreal. He has published 5 novels with Marchand de feuilles and in France with Éditions du Toucan and Éditions J'ai lu (Flammarion). He is a past winner of Radio-Canada's "Combat des livres" (the equivalent of the CBC's Canada Reads contest), a finalist for the Prix littéraire France-Québec and the Prix des cinq continents, and a winner of the Prix des libraires and the Prix littéraire des collégiens. Songs for the Cold of Heart is his fourth novel and his second to be published in English with QC Fiction. It was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Translation and the Giller Prize.
Reviews
"This novel from Dupont ... the first from a new fiction imprint dedicated to publishing `the very best of a new generation of Quebec storytellers in flawless English translation,' lives up to that ambition. ... By turns poignant, playful, and nostalgic, the book evokes '70s Quebec with the quirky but successful device of combining an autobiographical family story with motifs drawn from fable, history, politics and myth. ... Translator McCambridge beautifully captures the joyous top notes and the darker undercurrents of this fascinating voice." (Publishers Weekly)
"Wildly imaginative ... a remarkably sensitive and intelligent coming-of-age story told with an irresistible blend of heartache, humour and magic." (Numéro Cinq)
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.
March soon, and it's already 28°C in Montreal. Hollywood is living a dead-end life working at the local graveyard. Meanwhile, it's snowing non-stop all over Europe and in Toronto, where Xavier works for a pharmaceutical company he couldn't care less about. The two meet somewhere in between... only ever in their dreams.
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.
Mathieu Poulin brings us an action comedy of a novel, starring big-budget, explosion-happy movie director Michael Bay.
What if Bad Boys was a film about decolonization? What if The Rock was about failing to be recognized by one's peers? If Armageddon was about a post-human future and the mysteries of meaning? And Pearl Harbor a reflection on the freedom afforded an artist when transforming fact into fiction?
What if Michael Bay was, against all odds, a misunderstood cinematic genius?
CAST (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)
Michael Bay o Jerry Bruckheimer
Ben Affleck o Meat Loaf
Don Simpson o Will Smith
Martin Lawrence o Neil deGrasse Tyson
Nicolas Cage o Sean Connery
Quentin Tarantino o Bruce Willis
AND SPECIAL GUEST STARS
Plato, Sartre, Kant, Derrida & Nietzsche
A man loses his daughter while swimming one summer. This little gem of a novellasad and beautiful and spellbinding all at onceis 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.
Author: Born in Quebec City in 1977, Charles Quimper is a former bookseller and has contributed to a number of magazines. Les Libraires magazine recognized the tenderness, infinite sadness, and absolute beauty of his debut novel, while Le Devoir hailed a new literary voice of remarkable density.
Reviews
If I had a book of the year, this is it. (Stuart John Allen, Winstonsdad's Blog)
Piercing and compact, Charles Quimper's novella In Every Wave follows a grief-consumed father through a vortex of regret and fragmented fantasies. Here, sorrow is an ocean, and lost possibilities lurk behind every swell [] Every phrase is a foghorn, and every utterance rasps. Almost too tender to touch (, Foreword Reviews)
one of the most touching books I have ever read [] a real gem (Stuart John Allen, Winstonsdad's Blog)
a picture of tenderness and a true-to-life image of the gaping hole left in the heart by loss (World Literature Today)
In Every Wave is beautiful, poetic, and profound (Naomi MacKinnon, Consumed By Ink)
Akin to an epic poem [] an extremely powerful soliloquy that addresses every parent's fear, losing a child, in a poetic and powerful manner. [] I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this debut work appear on the Best Translated Book Awards longlist and will be eagerly awaiting Charles Quimper's later writings. (Tony Messenger, Messenger's Booker (and more) Blog)
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.
About the Author
Annie Perreault lives in Montreal and graduated from McGill University with a degree in Russian studies and French literature. The Woman in Valencia is her first novel. It was shortlisted for the Rendez-vous du premier roman and was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Ringuet. Her 2015 collection of short stories L'occupation des jours received an Honourable Mention from the Prix Adrienne-Choquette, and she is a previous winner of the Grand Prix littéraire Radio-Canada for best short story.
About the Translator
Raised in the Laurentian town of Rawdon, Quebec, Ann Marie returned to her native Montreal to pursue a BA in translation at Concordia University and has worked as a commercial translator since 1999. She is the owner of Traduction Proteus Inc., a certified translator, a mentor for aspiring members of her professional order, and a part-time lecturer in translation studies at McGill University's School of Continuing Studies. She earned an MA in translation studies from Concordia in 2018. The Woman in Valencia is her first literary translation.
PRAISE FOR THE WOMAN IN VALENCIA
Translations of French novels by Quebec authors don't always hit the mark in English Canada. The Woman in Valencia does. [] These emotions, which many of us have known in life, make the novel and characters very accessible and draw us into the story, if only for a brief time. Perreault certainly has demonstrated an exceptional talent for this genre of fiction-writing, and her translator, Boulanger, impeccable work in rendering the novel into English. [] If and when Perreault picks up the pen to write a new novel, I will eagerly read it. For the time being, I will nurture the tender strokes of unhappiness, the shadowy outcomes and the enduring characters of the women in her first novel. (Ian Thomas Shaw, The Ottawa Review of Books)
This was a quick read but certainly a remarkable one. It is a book that reflects the human condition well and makes us want to refer to other readers with glee. Well-crafted and thought-provoking, The Woman in Valencia will certainly be a noted novel of the 2021 season. (Steven Buechler, The Library of Pacific Tranquility)
some of the best-penned psychological insights into a tortured mind as I've come across in some time [] I truly savoured reading The Woman in Valencia, being fully drawn into Claire's mind through her thoughts, actions, and inactions. (James M. Fisher, The Miramichi Reader)
A resounding success! [] an author to watch out for. (Josée Boileau, Journal de Montréal)
a thought-provoking read, I particularly enjoyed it because of my close association with Valencia. (Tina, Trip Fiction)
A novel in which inaction and avoidance collide, in a masterfully fictionalized retelling of a real-life event experienced by the author. As disturbing as it is moving. (Isabelle Houde, Le Droit)
With pitch-perfect prose and an ear for rhythm, Annie Perreault explores the physical and psychological ramifications of anxiety with intelligence and sensitivity. (Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec, Le Devoir)
With her finely honed writing style, the author explores the themes of avoidance, powerlessness in the face of incomprehension, and empathy as a middle ground. (Mario Cloutier, La Presse+)
A beautiful novel that deftly addresses the themes of empathy, indifference, and attachment. (Nathalie Roy, Salut Bonjour Weekend)
Alternating between tragedy and light, this debut novel forces the reader to question their own sense of compassion and empathy. (Claudia Larochelle, L'actualité)
A beautiful novel and an engaging style that stays with the reader. (Yvon Paré, Littérature du Québec)
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.
_____
Towards the end of the 18th century, twenty-four traders would meet under a tree to buy and sell shares. The tree was located at 68 Wall Street, so called because of a wall that used to mark the northern limits of the colony of New Amsterdam, on the Island of Manhattan.
On May 17, 1792, the twenty-four brokers signed, beneath the tree, the Buttonwood Agreement. This marked the foundation of the New York Stock Exchange, and the birth of Wall Street.
Today, the tree on Wall Street has long since fallen. And the twenty-four traders' transactions, brokered in the shade of a plane tree, have become complex to the point of being almost intangible and immaterial.
Finance has become an abstraction. And it pervades every sphere of our lives. Including contemporary art. Especially contemporary art.
Critics' Choice Award, Quebec Association of Theatre Critics (AQCT): Best Show and Best Text
PRAISE
"I was swept along from Quebec to London to New York, learning about the volatile world of finance and the contemporary art world [...] The relationship between Alice and Greg (which echoes the relationship between art and finance) is intense, tempestuous, and all-too-brief. Entertaining and informative, The Art of the Fall is well worth a read." (James Fisher, The Miramichi Reader)
Virtually every scene reveals the workings of the art world or unpacks an economic episode or principle. [...] The play has the rhythm and complexity of the finest stories, the inventiveness and zaniness of a saga. We can almost never predict how the story will unfold." Le Soleil
"[The Art of the Fall] brings together an impressive collective of creative minds around the themes of art and the economy: are these spheres really so very far removed from one another? Cerebral and dry though the premise might first appear, the result is nevertheless a performance of remarkable depth." Le Devoir
Rosa Ost grows up in Notre-Dame-du-Cachalot, a tiny village at the end of the world, where two industries are king: paper and Boredom. The only daughter of Terese Ost (a fair-to-middling trade unionist and a first-rate Scrabble player), the fate that befalls Rosa is the focus of this tale of long journeys and longer lives, of impossible deaths, unwavering prophecies, and unsettling dreams as she leaves her village for Montreal on a quest to summon the westerly wind that has proved so vital to the local economy.
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 aren't always quiet.
"By turns caustic, fierce and moving, this sinuous novel is chock full of interwoven stories, comical scenes and larger-than-life, hilarious characters. The novelist casts his spell to rework historical events in a magical world, blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, between centuries past and the year 2000 ... Brilliant and exhilarating." (Suzanne Giguère, Le Devoir)
"Delightful" (Marie-Claude Fortin, La Presse)
"A gem" (Didier Fessou, Le Soleil)
PRAISE FOR Eric Dupont's SONGS FOR THE COLD OF HEART
"spectacular... original in every sense" (Literary Review of Canada)
"masterful... heartbreaking and hilarious" (Publishers Weekly)
"highly recommended" (Library Journal)
"fiercely readable" (Toronto Star)
This book manages to capture the cultural zeitgeist of Quebec culture in the twentieth century. It reminded me of all the great French Canadian novels I read as a child, but pushed them to new, delightful, hilarious, epic levels. [...] I dare you not to read the first three pages and fall in love." (Heather O'Neill, jury member, 2018 Giller Prize)
"As magnificent a work of irony and magic as the boldest works of Gabriel García Márquez, but with a wholly original sensibility that captures the marvellous obsessions of the Québécois zeitgeist of the 20th century. It is, without a doubt, a tour de force. And the translation is as exquisite as a snowflake." (Giller Prize jury)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Dupont was born in Amqui, Quebec, in 1970. He left his native Gaspé Peninsula at age 16 for Austria and other faraway locales, returning to Quebec in 2003 to accept a position as a lecturer in translation at the McGill University School of Continuing Studies. His fourth novel, La Fiancée américaine, released in 2012, won the Prix des libraires du Québec and the Prix littéraire des collégiens. Its English translation by Peter McCambridge, Songs for the Cold of Heart, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2018 and subsequently published by HarperVia, outside of Canada, under the title The American Fiancée. One of the hallmarks of Eric's writing is the juxtaposition of the supernatural and real worlds. The lighthearted tone of his work often belies undercurrents of deeper themes and meanings.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Originally from Ireland, Peter McCambridge holds a BA in modern languages from Cambridge University, England, and has lived in Quebec City since 2003. He runs Québec Reads and now QC Fiction. Life in the Court of Matane was the first novel he chose for this collection and the book that made him want to become a literary translator in the first place. His translation of the first chapter won the 2012 John Dryden Translation Prize. His translations have been World Literature Today Notable Translations, longlisted for Canada Reads, and finalists for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for Translation.
Nadia Comaneci's gold-medal performance at the Olympic Games in Montreal is the starting point for a whole new generation. Eric Dupont watches the performance on TV, mesmerized. The son of a police officer (Henry VIII) and a professional cook-as he likes to remind us-he grows up in the depths of the Quebec countryside with a new address for almost every birthday and little but memories of his mother to hang onto. His parents have divorced, and the novel's narrator relates his childhood, comparing it to a family gymnastics performance worthy of Nadia herself.
Life in the court of Matane is unforgiving, and we explore different facets of it (dreams of sovereignty, schoolyard bullying, imagined missions to Russia, poems by Baudelaire), each based around an encounter with a different animal, until the narrator befriends a great horned owl, summons up the courage to let go of the upper bar forever, and makes his glorious escape.
PRAISE FOR LIFE IN THE COURT OF MATANE
"This novel from Dupont ... the first from a new fiction imprint dedicated to publishing `the very best of a new generation of Quebec storytellers in flawless English translation,' lives up to that ambition. ... By turns poignant, playful, and nostalgic, the book evokes '70s Quebec with the quirky but successful device of combining an autobiographical family story with motifs drawn from fable, history, politics and myth. ... Translator McCambridge beautifully captures the joyous top notes and the darker undercurrents of this fascinating voice." (Publishers Weekly)
"Dupont is a writer of such intelligence and skill that he is able to not only become a philosopher, but a poet, who not only understands the horrors of a dysfunctional childhood, but also knows what is beautiful about it. And this book is a testament to his unwavering generosity towards both his characters and the people of Quebec." (Heather O'Neill, author)
"Wildly imaginative ... a remarkably sensitive and intelligent coming-of-age story told with an irresistible blend of heartache, humour and magic." (Numéro Cinq)
"A beautiful, tragicomic coming-of-age story ... This translation is knocking my socks off." (Bronwyn Averett, Book Riot)
"With an excellent translation by McCambridge, one which reads smoothly and keeps the humour which undoubtedly pervades the original, Dupont's novel makes for an entertaining look at a Québécois childhood. ... It all makes for an impressive start for QC Fiction." (Tony's Reading List)
"a captivating voice that sharply trapezes between a heightened version of his parents' divorce and life in the countryside ... Eric's insights brim with intelligence." (Foreword Reviews)
"Tangential, expansive in its ability to capture youth at a crossroads, and unexpectedly piercing ... an inventive novel" (Foreword Reviews)
"QC Fiction has done a great service to English readers everywhere by translating this popular Quebec novel for us." (The Miramichi Reader)
"an irreverent cocktail ... a feast of a novel, calorie-filled and decadent" (Québec Reads)
"At the time, it seemed all of Quebec was trying to stay aloft between many sets of uneven bars. There was the feud between the sovereigntists and the federalists keeping society off-balance ... The conservative traditionalism of the Duplessis era was disappearing in favour of the more progressive values of the Quiet Revolution. Religious faith was dissipating in Quebec homes, yet children were still being taught by nuns in Catholic schools. Comaneci's gymnastics set the scene for an exploration of all these faultlines in Dupont's autobiographical novel, Life in the Court of Matane. ... For the informed, and for those prepared to laugh at Quebec's peccadilloes, this is a hilarious romp." (Quill & Quire)
"a classic coming-of-age novel worth pondering over" (Steven Buechler, The Library of Pacific Tranquility)
"a highly original read" (PRISM magazine)
"Dupont's gift is that his stories have never been told in such a way before, could only ever be told in that way, and will never again be told like that." (Buried in Print)
Eric Dupont was born in Amqui, Quebec, in 1970. He left his native Gaspé Peninsula at age 16 for Austria and other faraway locales, returning to Quebec in 2003 to accept a position as a lecturer in translation at the McGill University School of Continuing Studies. His fourth novel, La Fiancée américaine, released in 2012, won the Prix des libraires du Québec and the Prix littéraire des collégiens. Its English translation by Peter McCambridge, Songs for the Cold of Heart, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2018 and subsequently published by HarperVia, outside of Canada, under the title The American Fiancée. One of the hallmarks of Eric's writing is the juxtaposition of the supernatural and real worlds. The lighthearted tone of his work often belies undercurrents of deeper themes and meanings.
Originally from Ireland, Peter McCambridge holds a BA in modern languages from Cambridge University, England, and has lived in Quebec City since 2003. He runs Québec Reads and now QC Fiction. Life in the Court of Matane was the first novel he chose for this collection and the book that made him want to become a literary translator in the first place. His translation of the first chapter won the 2012 John Dryden Translation Prize. His translations have been World Literature Today Notable Translations, longlisted for Canada Reads, and finalists for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award for Translation.
