After her marriage breaks up, a woman returns with her young son to the ramshackle house in the countryside where her parents once lived. Her story unfolds against the backdrop of a country laid waste by a half century of Communist rule. She grapples with the desolation of her physical surroundings and seeks solace in the world of her imagination, where her memories are interwoven with tales from ancient mythology.

Felicia Mihali is a Montreal writer, translator and Éditions Hashtag publisher who studies French, English, Chinese and Dutch along with postcolonial literature and history. Her first novel, Le pays du fromage, was published in 2002 by XYZ Éditeur, followed by six other works written in French. In 2012, she published her first book in English, The Darling of Kandahar (LLP), which was nominated for Canada Reads as one the year's best novels. The must-read 2021 novel Pineapple Kisses in Iqaluit appeared simultaneously in French as Une nuit d’amour à Iqaluit, and Judith Weisz Woodsworth's translation of Le pays du fromage was published as A Ramshackle Home (LLP, 2023) and became a CBC Books top 40 title.

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Judith Weisz Woodsworth is a translator and former professor of translation studies at Concordia University. She is the recipient of the 2022 Governor General’s literary award for her translation of History of the Jews in Quebec by Pierre Anctil. Her translations include novels by Pierre Nepveu and Abla Farhoud (Hutchison Street, LLP 2018), and she has published widely on translation history and theory. She lives in Montreal.

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