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 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 has won four times, Blais has been awarded the Gilles-Corbeil Prize, the Médicis Prize, the Molson Prize, and Guggenheim Fellowships. She divides her time between Key West, Florida, and Quebec.
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.
Other titles by Marie-Claire Blais
Other titles by Sheila Fischman
Other titles by Lisa Moore
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
Flannery
Racket
New Writing Made in Newfoundland
Hard Light
Brick Books Classics 5