These Festive Nights
- Publisher
- House of Anansi Press Inc
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2018
- Category
- Literary, General
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780887846014
- Publish Date
- Sep 1997
- List Price
- $22.95
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781487004583
- Publish Date
- Aug 2018
- List Price
- $16.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781487004590
- Publish Date
- Aug 2018
- List Price
- $9.99
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Description
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.
About the authors
Marie-Claire Blais is a defining figure in Canada&146;s literary landscape, with over 30 books to her credit, including La Belle Bete (Mad Shadows), published when she was twenty, Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (A Season in the Life of Emmanuel), which is now taught regularly in university and college courses, and Soifs (These Festive Nights), which won the Governor General's Award in 1996.
Marie-Claire Blais' profile page
Sheila Fischman's profile page
Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of the novels Caught, February, and Alligator. Caught was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize and is now a major CBC television series starring Allan Hawco. February won CBC’s Canada Reads competition, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Alligator was a finalist for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and the Caribbean region), and was a national bestseller. Her story collection Open was a finalist for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize and a national bestseller. Her most recent work is a collection of short stories called Something for Everyone. Lisa lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Editorial Reviews
[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
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
[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
Other titles by Marie-Claire Blais
Other titles by Sheila Fischman
Other titles by Lisa Moore
Hard Ticket
New Writing Made in Newfoundland
This Is How We Love
Muskrat Falls
How a Mega Dam Became a Predatory Formation
Us, Now
The Democracy Cookbook
Recipes to Renew Governance in Newfoundland and Labrador
Something for Everyone
Luminous Ink
Writers on Writing in Canada
Caught (TV tie-in edition)
The Bush Garden
Essays on the Canadian Imagination
