Rights List 2020 2

Boréal | Montréal 2020 Rights List Fiction and Narrative Highlights Sébastien Lefebvre [email protected] Pascal Assathiany [email protected] a l l FICTION AND NARRATIVE Petites cendres ou la capture 2 Les Crépuscules de la Yellowstone 3 La Fille de la famille 4 Viral 5 Fais de beaux rêves 6 Souvenir de night 7 L’Œil de Jupiter 8 Pour qui je me prends 9 Un espace entre les mains 10 Nature writing series 11 Soifs 12 Marie-Claire Blais backlist 13-14 Fiction and narrative backlist 15-16 PETITES CENDRES OU LA CAPTURE Marie-Claire Blais Novel | 9782764626160 | 216 pages Rights sold: Seuil (France) Marie-Claire Blais is the internationally revered author of more than thirty 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 Médicis Prize, Prince-Pierre-de-Monaco Prize, the Molson Prize, and Guggenheim Fellowships. She divides her time between Quebec and Florida. Her chef-d’oeuvre Soifs just came out in German (Suhrkamp) and will be translated in Italian and Spanish in 2021. “One of the most distinctive and original living writers of fiction.” (The New Yorker, 2019) THE BOOK A small town in the American South, just before the first light of dawn. A policeman on horseback approaches a homeless black man who’s sleeping in the street. The old man is beaten down by misery and drugs. He berates the cop furiously, rattling off a litany of injustices his ancestors suffered at the hands of white people. The policeman only wants one thing: to arrest the man and put him in jail for the rest of the night. What right does this old man have to harangue him? After all, doesn’t a police officer represent the order to which all citizens are subject? Then a transvestite happens by, on the way home from a bar. He tries to reason with the policeman. When he sees the cop reach for his holstered gun, he shields the homeless man with his body. He tells himself the cop would never dare shoot a poor, defenceless man. But is he really sure? This is an America scarred by social inequality, racial injustice and war wounds. Marie-Claire Blais’ powerful, inimitable style shines brightly in this ode to cultural and sexual difference. As always, she is perfectly in tune with her time. RECEPTION “A poetic and mastered universe which belongs totally, entirely to Marie-Claire Blais. I read it like you read poetry, like slam. There is rhythm. Marie-Claire Blais is our Patti Smith.” Radio-Canada “She bears a beautiful testimony to trans prostitutes, to the black community and to marginalized people in general since always. It is a fight for dignity. The feather becomes a sword. She writes as if sometimes blood flows.” La Métropole “In this sinister portrait of an America adrift, frozen in intolerance, Marie-Claire Blais manages to make horror and hope coexist, recalling that love and solidarity will always be sovereign in the face of mistrust and ignorance.” Le Devoir “Through the vigorous exchanges between a black itinerant worn out by misery and drugs, a white policeman and a transvestite, she displays all the racism and social inequalities that darken the world.” Le Journal de Montréal “In the eternal movement of the waves, there is like a promise, at least, a desire for renewal. Marie- Claire Blais remains this unique novelist, this benevolent mother who, after all her stories and like Petites Cendres here, does not despair.” La Presse Fiction and Narrative | New Title | 2 LES CRÉPUSCULES DE LA YELLOWSTONE Louis Hamelin Novel | 9782764626191 | 376 pages All rights available Louis Hamelin has written several novels, including La Rage (Governor General's Literary Award) and La Constellation du lynx (Prix des libraires du Québec, Prix des collégiens). He’s also a translator and the editor of a nature writing series at Boréal. THE BOOK In April 1843, the famous naturalist John James Audubon embarked, from St. Louis, on what would prove to be his final expedition. His ambition was to collect as many specimens as possible to immortalize them in the book he had been writing on the “viviparous quadrupeds” – mammals – of North America. Born Jean-Jacques Audubon in Saint-Domingue (the future Haiti) and raised in France, he felt at home aboard the Omega. French was the main language spoken on the boat, which flew the U.S. flag as it steamed up the Missouri River. His guide was Étienne Provost, a celebrated French-Canadian coureur de bois. This part of the continent – from New Spain to the Great Lakes – was inhabited by Indigenous peoples and trappers. It teemed with astounding amounts of wildlife. The trekkers didn’t hold back as they pillaged the fauna, shooting anything that moved in the name of science, or perhaps simply from the giddiness men feel when holding a gun. Louis Hamelin explores the myths of an entire continent, just as one sails up a river, tacking between shadow and light, between official history and mysterious legend. It is also a journey in Audubon’s footsteps – by car, amidst the herds of SUVs that have replaced the bison on the byways of North Dakota. His odyssey ends with a bender in Livingston, Montana, with a fervent disciple of Jim Harrison. A poignant memorial to all the lives sacrificed and all the dreams buried in the name of highway asphalt. RECEPTION “Hamelin succeeds in making science a worthy adventure and a great western, with an American background still French.” Le Journal de Montréal “With the sharpness of a novelist capable of persuade anything to anyone.” Le Devoir “A fascinating book that tells the story of John James Audubon. There are scenes absolutely delicious in there. Louis Hamelin has the talent to bring scientific reality to life. Outstanding!” Culture club “A novel full of details, written in a precise and rigorous style, remarkable for its evocative power.” La Tribune “A captivating journey. It is a real celebration of nature.” Radio-Canada “Probably one of the Quebec writers who best describes nature. There is something very moving about reading these passages which speak of extinct species.” La Presse “A new book by Louis Hamelin is always a bookstore event.” Librairie Pantoute “A lucid look at the human race, its greed, its rage, its obsessions, its follies and its thirst for money. Even Audubon despite his fantastic work had this predatory and pillaging side.” Littérature du Québec Fiction and Narrative | New Title | 3 LA FILLE DE LA FAMILLE Louise Desjardins Novel | 9782764626368 | 200 pages All rights available Louise Desjardins is a novelist and a poet. She won the Grand Prix du Journal de Montréal and the Prix des Arcades de Bologne for her first novel, La Love (1993). La Fille de la famille is her 6th novel and is a critical and public success of the rentrée litteraire 2020. THE BOOK What is this country, where they squirt Flytox on children before a walk in the woods? Where entire families take valium the night before a wedding? Where only fathers, not mothers, can register a birth with the state? Where a woman needs her husband’s permission to take out a bank loan? Where boys are kings and brothers walk on the other side of the street rather than be seen with their sisters? Where a dispensation from the bishop is required before one can teach Madame Bovary? With irony, power and rhythm, and just the right amount of historical detail, Louise Desjardins tells the story of a fighter. RECEPTION “A writing performance that is very, very subtle. Louise Desjardins at her best in this book.” Novelist Jocelyne Saucier (Il pleuvait des oiseaux) “A little literary gem.” Les libraires “A beautiful portrait of women from the 1960s to 1970s.” Le Téléjournal “We close the novel half-amused, half-rebellious, but above all filled with great affection for the narrator who managed to free herself along the way. We would like to know the rest of his adventures.” La Presse “It's quite delicious as a novel. We surrender because it looks like life.” Radio-Canada “Like so many women who have carried Quebec on their shoulders, the character of the Suffragette will for a long time place the needs of all the others ahead of her own. At the risk of getting lost.” Le Devoir “It’s really fascinating. It shows us with very effective, very simple writing that things are changing.” Radio-Canada “A wonderful storyteller who has the art of drawing you into the twists and turns of life, of holding you back by making you follow all the small steps and hesitations of her characters.” Littérature du Québec Fiction and Narrative | New Title | 4 VIRAL Mauricio Segura Novel | 9782764626153 | 304 pages Rights sold: Croatian (Leykam) Born in Temuco, Chile, Mauricio Segura arrived as a child in Canada. His novel Côte-des-Nègres was a great success and is on the program of high schools. He wrote a novel on the famous jazzman Oscar Peterson (Oscar) and is considered an important author of migrant literature in Quebec. Viral is his 5th novel. THE BOOK One hot September morning, a video starts making the rounds, leaving discord in its wake. A young man wearing a djellaba boards a packed bus and gets into a heated argument with the driver. The scene is captured on cellphones, and shared by a journalist. The video goes viral, accumulating heated arguments and crude insults along the way.

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