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Kamouraska
by Anne Hebert
from House Of Anansi
Translated into seven languages, Kamouraska won the Paris book prize and was made into a landmark feature film by Claude Jutra. A classic of Canadian literature by the great Québecoise writer, Kamouraska is based on a real nineteenth-century love-triangle in rural Quebec. It paints a poetic and terrifying tableau of the life of Elisabeth d'Aulnières: her marriage to Antoine Tassy, squire of Kamouraska; his violent murder; and her passion for George Nelson, an American doctor. Passionate and evocative, Kamouraska is the timeless story of one woman's destructive commitment to an ideal love.
In the Shadow of the Wind
by Anne Hebert
from House Of Anansi
On a hot summer night in 1936, Olivia and Nora Atkins go for a stroll along the beach in Gaspé. They never return. When the body of one of them is washed ashore days later, the tiny community of Griffin Creek is electrified. The teenagers have been murdered. But by whom?
Le Premier Jardin
by Anne Hebert
from Editions Du Seuil
The First Garden
by Anne Hebert
from House Of Anansi
Flora Fontages is a famous Parisian actress who has been in exile from her native Canada for twenty years. When word comes that her long-estranged daughter, Maud, has disappeared in Quebec City, she decides to return home, accepting the part of Winnie, the old crone in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, at a local theatre. The visit unexpectedly turns into a devastating confrontation with her past and present illusions, as Flora finds she must come to terms with all the roles she has ever played in life, as actress, woman, mother, child, and lover.
Anne Hebert: Selected Poems (New American Translations)
Quebec, tr A Poulin Jr
Burden of Dreams
by Anne Hebert
from House Of Anansi
As Julien seeks liberation in Paris, he is haunted by the memories of a fateful autumn on the banks of the Duchesnay River near Quebec City. Until then, his reclusive childhood had been centered on his protective mother, Pauline, and his sister, Hélène. A wild and beautiful young woman captivates both Julien and Hélène. She promises them freedom, but her reckless urgings turn ecstasy and seduction into bitter tragedy.
Aurélien, Clara, Mademoiselle, and the English Lieutenant
by Anne Hebert
from House Of Anansi
A shimmering fable that captivates and dazzles with its simple beauty.
Day Has No Equal but the Night
by Anne Hebert
from House of Anansi Pr
A Suit of Light
by Anne Hebert
from House Of Anansi
Anne Hébert's final novel, originally published in French as Un Habit de lumière, is a story of dangerous dreams come true.
Rose-Alba Almevida, her husband Pedro, and her son Miguel live by modest means in a Paris apartment, but each, in their way, dreams of returning home to Spain to reclaim the honor and identity stripped of them by the immigrant struggle. Yet, where Pedro plans and saves for a vineyard plot to which he can retire, Rose-Alba and Miguel have vastly different dreams. For them Spain is an emotional state, where impulse and instinct prevail, where passions are untempered by foreign, unfamiliar values. When a mysterious stranger enters their lives and offers all that Rose-Alba and Miguel seek, the Almevida family is torn violently apart and their innocent dreams become the barbed weapons of their own destruction.
Rose-Alba Almevida, her husband Pedro, and her son Miguel live by modest means in a Paris apartment, but each, in their way, dreams of returning home to Spain to reclaim the honor and identity stripped of them by the immigrant struggle. Yet, where Pedro plans and saves for a vineyard plot to which he can retire, Rose-Alba and Miguel have vastly different dreams. For them Spain is an emotional state, where impulse and instinct prevail, where passions are untempered by foreign, unfamiliar values. When a mysterious stranger enters their lives and offers all that Rose-Alba and Miguel seek, the Almevida family is torn violently apart and their innocent dreams become the barbed weapons of their own destruction.
Am I Disturbing You?
by Anne Hebert
from House Of Anansi
This is the story of Édouard, StÉphane, and the spirited girl they find alone and apparently lost in Paris. When the two men offer the young Quebec girl shelter for the night, their lives are profoundly and irrevocably changed. StÉphane falls quickly for Delphine, but Édouard, a man without expectations who hides from the world in a life of mediocrity and whose only desire is to live and die quietly, is slower to accept her. He is disturbed by Delphine's abrupt arrival in his life, her strange accent, her excessive passion. Then, just as he opens himself to her exuberance and vulnerability, he is torn violently from her and left to unravel the mysteries of her sudden presence and absence. Anne HÉbert's fifth novel in translation (originally published under the title Est-ce que je te dÉrange?) springs from a place between dream and reality, and offers a disturbing look into the workings of fascination and obsession. Tortured love, broken childhoods, and the forces of nature and death are woven into this extraordinary, poetic tale from one of Canada's most important writers.
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