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MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS (1939-2021) was the internationally revered author of more than twenty-five books, many of which have been published around the world. In addition to the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, which she won four times, Blais was awarded the Gilles-Corbeil Prize, the Médicis Prize, the Molson Prize, and several Guggenheim Fellowships. Marie-Claire Blais divided her time between Florida and Quebec. Sheila Fischman is the translator of more than 150 novels. She has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation, the Canada Council Translation Prize, and the Molson Prize for the Arts. She lives in Montreal. LISA MOORE is the acclaimed author of the novels Caught, February, and Alligator; the story collections Open and Something for Everyone; and the young-adult novel Flannery. Her books have won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and CBC’s Canada Reads, been finalists for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Moore is also the co-librettist, along with Laura Kaminsky, of the opera February, based on her novel of the same name. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.Marie-Claire Blais’s best, and without a doubt, the richest and most impressive tableau d’époque I have read in a long time . . . Blais has modestly, generously, written The Divine Comedy of our time.
Le Devoir
[These Festive Nights] resounds with what has become a Blais leitmotif: the spiritual thirst born of hardship, and the hunger for redemption in a brutal world.
The Gazette
[In These Festive Nights] Marie-Claire Blais appeals to the best part of who we are. It’s a book that we finish reluctantly and with a deep sense of gratitude for the characters who, like the heroes of Sophocles and Shakespeare, are the messengers of a hidden truth of fundamental concern to the human heart.
Magazine Littéraire
The first volume in the beloved novelist Marie-Claire Blais’ prize-winning novel cycle — acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction — reissued in a handsome A List edition, featuring an introduction by Lisa Moore.
Originally published in 1995 under the title Soifs, the first novel in Marie-Claire Blais’ masterful series won the Governor General’s Award for French Fiction and was hailed by critics around the world as a tour de force, comparing Blais to such literary greats as Virginia Woolf, Dante, Sophocles, and Shakespeare. In this dazzling rendering, These Festive Nights, celebrated translator Sheila Fischman brings Blais’ novel to life for English-speaking readers.
A sun-drenched paradise in the Gulf of Mexico surrounded by the glimmering blue sea; Renata is convalescing on this island poised between two worlds: between great wealth and extreme poverty, between the past and an uncertain future, between the beauty of the world and the horrors of history.
During her time here, Renata becomes tormented by thirst — for justice, for pleasure, for intoxication — while all around her, festivities are going on in joint celebration of the birth of baby Vincent and the end of the twentieth century. Over the course of three days and three nights a flock of characters assembles — an entire spectrum of humanity is depicted in the grip of doubt and suffering. In this swirling, baroque fresco, Marie-Claire Blais captures the essence of our apocalyptic age, rendering it in powerfully evocative prose.
REVIEW COPIES:
- Publishers Weekly
- Booklist
- Kirkus Reviews
AN INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED LITERARY ICON:
- Marie-Claire Blais is a literary icon. Her work is treasured in Canada, and it is widely revered in the U.S. Her writing has been described as “magical,” “powerful,” and “enriching,” and her award-winning series about contemporary North America has been compared to works by Virginia Woolf. As her stature as a literary legend grows, House of Anansi wishes to aptly honour her oeuvre with special editions of her most acclaimed novels in English translation.
A SEMINAL TRANSLATION:
- Sheila Fischman is the preeminent translator of French fiction in Canada and has twice received the Félix Antoine-Savard Award from the Translation Center at Columbia University. Her translation work has helped to spread a new generation of French voices across North America, including Michel Tremblay, Hubert Aquin, Jacques Poulin, Anne Hébert, and Kim Thúy.
A SPECIAL REISSUE FOLLOWING AN ANTICIPATED NEW NOVEL:
- This A List reissue will land just a few short months after Marie-Claire Blais’ newest novel in the Soifs cycle, A Twilight Celebration, publishes in June 2018. Reviewers and prize juries will surely be buzzing about the new work, and this will be an excellent time to reinvigorate Blais’ impressive backlist for rediscovery and for a brand-new generation of readers.