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Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
Invited to a quiet Swiss château by the enigmatic Tatiana Beaujeu Lehmann, Anne begins to slowly write a novel in a language that is not hers, a language that makes meaning foreign and keeps her alert to the world and its fiery horizon.
Will the strange intoxication that takes hold of her and her characters – sculptor Charles; his sister Kim, about to leave for the far north; and Laure Ravin, a lawyer obsessed with the Patriot Act – allow her to break through the darkness of the world?
Fences in Breathing, first published and critically lauded in French as La capture du sombre, and now brought into English by the celebrated translator Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, is a disquieting, dexterous and defiant missive, another triumph by one of North America's foremost practitioners of innovative writing.
Invited to a quiet Swiss château by the enigmatic Tatiana Beaujeu Lehmann, Anne begins to slowly write a novel in a language that is not hers, a language that makes meaning foreign and keeps her alert to the world and its fiery horizon.
Will the strange intoxication that takes hold of her and her characters – sculptor Charles; his sister Kim, about to leave for the far north; and Laure Ravin, a lawyer obsessed with the Patriot Act – allow her to break through the darkness of the world?
Fences in Breathing, first published and critically lauded in French as La capture du sombre, and now brought into English by the celebrated translator Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, is a disquieting, dexterous and defiant missive, another triumph by one of North America's foremost practitioners of innovative writing.
Price: $16.95
Pages: 120
Publisher: Coach House Books
Imprint: Coach House Books
Publication Date:
14 April 2005
Trim Size: 7.25 X 4.75 in
ISBN: 9781552452134
Format: Paperback
'This exotic, disorienting and dazzling novel tells the story of words — of their sound, their taste, their shape — and asks grave and essential questions about time and language.' — La Presse
'[Brossard] writes with a poetic intensity that burns select lines and sometimes entire paragraphs into the reader's mind.'
— Montreal Gazette
'The atmosphere of reverie that mesmerizes the novel's characters and sends them careening into other selves also overcomes the reader … Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood's translation is noteworthy, bold and pulsing with Brossardesque poetic energy ('suspiteful' — yum). The English version is suggestive without being overt, and playful without seeming clever; it's the perfect translation of an elegant, complicated book.' – Globe and Mail
Nicole Brossard is a poet, novelist and essayist who has published more than thirty books since 1965, including These Our Mothers, Lovhers, Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn. She co-founded La Barre du Jour and La Nouvelle Barre du Jour, two important literary journals in Quebec. She has won two Governor General's Awards for poetry, as well as le Prix Athanase-David and the Canada Council's Molson Prize. Her work has been translated into several languages. She lives in Montreal.