Mad Shadows PDF Download

Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: New Canadian Library
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
A harrowing pathology of the soul, "Mad Shadows" centres on a family group: Patrice, the beautiful and narcissistic son; his ugly and malicious sister, Isabelle-Marie; and Louise, their vain and uncomprehending mother. These characters inhabit an amoral universe where beauty reflects no truth and love is an empty delusion. Each character is ultimately annihilated by their own obsessions. Acclaimed and reviled when it exploded on the Quebec literary scene in 1959, "Mad Shadows" initiated a new era in Quebec fiction.

Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 1487006330
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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The ninth novel in internationally acclaimed author Marie-Claire Blais’s extraordinary Soifs cycle, Songs for Angel is an impassioned interrogation of violence and hate that takes us into the soul of a white supremacist on the verge of a racist attack. In the penultimate installment of the magnificent and ambitious Soifs cycle, widely regarded as one of the most original and ambitious endeavors ever to be undertaken in contemporary literature, renowned novelist Marie-Claire Blais once again marries the highest artistic standards with the most pressing human and political concerns. Revisiting figures from the previous novels in a swirling fresco of more than a hundred characters, Blais also takes us into the soul of “the Young Man,” a white supremacist preparing to attack a Black church and murder its entire congregation. This is an extraordinary portrait of the times that jostles and discomboluates the reader while inviting us to see the world in all its injustice and distress, but also its promise and beauty. Songs for Angel reminds us that Blais is a writer who never ceases to situate us in the world and the roles we play in it, and that reading her is always an unforgettable human experience.

Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 1487004591
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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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.

Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: Exile Editions, Ltd.
ISBN: 9781550960136
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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This compelling story explores the motley crew of characters--including mother-turned-stripper Gloria, alcoholic Tim, frequent jailbird Charlie, and the suicidal wife of a rich doctor--who call the rundown Hôtel des Voyageurs home. Mesmerizing in its passion and humility, the narrative evokes the despair and innocence present in modern urban surroundings.

Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 177089196X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award: Translation. Shortlisted for the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation. In Mai at the Predators' Ball, Marie-Claire Blais, literary legend and four-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, offers a mesmerizing and unforgettable portrait of imaginary beings who seem to embrace the whole of humanity. Every night in the Saloon, after darkness falls, a group of boys are transformed into creatures we see only in dreams. They adorn themselves in colourful dresses and wigs and they take to the stage to sing and dance. They open their arms to those who are excluded -- both men and women, triumphant and threatened, both free and bound -- and every evening is a carnival of freedom and transgression. With this masterful novel, Blais invites us to share the drama of perfect joy, the tragedy of happiness, and she gives us her best work yet.

Author: Irene Oore
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
The most comprehensive reference guide to one of Canada's most distinguished writers. A three-time Governor-General's Award winner, Marie-Claire Blais has changed the literary landscape of the nation. An indispensable source for information on both Blais's works and on the wealth of criticism devoted to the writer, this bibliography also provides accurate and insightful details about manuscript and archival material. Oore and MacLennan have fully annotated all of the critical material concerned with Blais's writing, and their book also includes thorough coverage of Blais-related radio and television broadcasts in France and Canada, as well as a guide to all published interviews with this important writer. An essential text to Blais scholars and of great interest to students and researchers in both Canadian and Québec literature, and in women's studies and comparative literature.

Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 1487004265
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
The second volume in the beloved novelist Marie-Claire Blais’s prize-winning novel cycle — acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction — reissued in a handsome A List edition. Originally published in 2001, Thunder and Light is the second volume in Marie-Claire Blais’s prize-winning Soifs series, hailed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction. Powered by its characters’ gripping exploration of the world’s dark corners, the novel is a teeming microcosm in which boundaries collapse and the extremes and contradictions that animate our times are reconciled. Blais locks us directly into the consciousness of her characters, many of whom we met in her previous novel, These Festive Nights, and many that she derives from actual news stories: Jessica, a seven-year-old attempting to beat the world record as the youngest pilot to cross the continent; Nathanaël, a teenager on death row for killing his favourite teacher; Our Lady of the Bags, a modern-day Joan of Arc who lives among Manhattan’s skyscrapers and follows the voices in her head; and Caroline and Jean-Mathieu, aging artists who are fighting to come together again. One character’s thoughts or actions have consequences for another 3,000 miles away who is a complete stranger to the first. This is an intricate house of cards, delicately but expertly constructed, that shocks us in its perversity and familiarity, ultimately finding hope and redemption in the most human and basic forms of art.

Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: London : Cape
ISBN:
Category : Canada
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374256284
Category : Farm life
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
In her third and most powerful novel, Marie-Claire Blais explores, with sober compassion and realistic detail, a season in the life of Emmanuel, the sixteenth child of a poverty-stricken farmer's family in rural Quebec. First published in 1965, "A Season in the Life of Emmanuel" established Blais's international reputation when it won the Prix France-Quebec and the Prix Medicis of France. The novel has been translated into 13 languages.

Author: Marie-Claire Blais
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 1487000189
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
What anxiety grips Petites Cendres as he runs towards the sea in the sunshine on a warm tropical morning? Shouldn’t he be reassured by the thought that he now lives at the Acacia Gardens, a comfortable home where all find care, understanding, and healing? How can Fleur, the young musical prodigy, listen to the diabolical confessions of Wrath, the fugitive priest, without shuddering? And, can Daniel the writer finish his novel, the one he has been working on for twenty years, despite his sensitivity and empathy for all creatures, even if they are the most humble, like the lizard he inadvertently crushed under his sandal? With this latest novel, Marie-Claire Blais once again gives us a vibrant portrait that embraces the span of life — from birth to death and beyond. Her characters question their purpose and what will come after, as they are confronted by evil that lives and that has taken root.