by Eve Lemieux translated by Cayman Rock forthcoming from Dundurn Press, 2022 Somewhere in Hell, Halloween 2012 Black eyeliner, huge gold hoops in my ears, an ebony wig that falls along my jawline: I, Cleopatra Flynn, rabid sex kitten, walk up Mont-Royal pouring a bottle of bubbly right down my throat. Step into the bar…

from École pour filles by Ariane Lessard La Mèche, 2020 translated by Frances Pope Ariandre It isn’t the first time that Miss Dominique has cautioned me. She saw me push Annette and run to hide behind the shed. This is where Miss Anguish does all the maintenance work on the…

by Ève Landry Les éditions de la maison en feu, 2020 translated by Natalia Hero Hi sweetie My night’s in a bad mood. The world resents me. I slow my pace. I watch my bus take off at the green light. I watch it navigate traffic. My eyes are full…

by Richard Dallaire, translated by Mary O’Connor Éditions Alto, 2013 A few nights every month, the authorities carried out horrifying purges. They locked down neighborhoods that were hardest hit by the drying up and erected scaffolding where guillotines dispatched a portion of each superfluous individual. “That’s a lot of work…

What does it take to be a good translator? "You need instinct, empathy, sensitivity, passion, and dispassion. You need a thick skin, a good ear, a strong gut, and fingers that can fly like the wind. You need humility and chutzpah. You need to be ready to defend your choices…

You recently translated The Coral Bride, your second novel by Roxanne Bouchard. What’s it like to return to an author and her characters? Does the translation get any easier? It’s always a pleasure to dive into a Roxanne Bouchard novel and immerse myself in familiar waters. She writes with such…

by Claudine Dumont translated by David Scott Hamilton House of Anansi, 2015 Captive by Claudine Dumont, translated by David Scott Hamilton, comes with a hell of a twist. It’s a twist so big that you might want to consider stapling the last few pages together in case you accidentally read…

by Richard Ste-Marie Alire, 2014 There can be so much grit between the detectives’ teeth in the crime fiction coming out of Quebec these days, it’s quite refreshing when an investigator with a touch of class comes along. Enter Detective Sergeant Francis Pagliaro of the Sûreté du Québec, a well-spoken…

Translated by Ann Marie Boulanger It’s a summer of crushing heat and unsolved crimes. From east to west, over a mind-boggling ten million square kilometres of terrain — dotted with countless lakes, a fistful of murderers, and masses of dense, dry scrub — people have shuttered their windows, drawn dusty…