by Marie-Claire Blais (Author), Nigel Spencer (Translator)

Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award: Translation. Shortlisted for the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation.

Literary legend and four-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award Marie-Claire Blais delivers the latest installment in her ongoing portrait of life in contemporary North America.

In this swirling fresco, we meet unforgettable characters, some familiar from previous works, some new. This time, Blais lets us into the consciousness of fifteen-year-old Mai, an unusually perceptive young woman whose uncensored observations on femininity and youth, freedom and constraint belie her age. And, in the Porte du Baiser Saloon, we meet a group of boys who adorn themselves in colourful dresses and wigs before they take to the stage to sing and dance every evening after darkness falls. They open their arms to those who are excluded -- both men and women, triumphant and threatened, both free and bound.

With this astonishing new novel, Blais gives us a remarkable chronicle of our modern age teeming with characters who seem to represent the whole of humanity. She invites us to share the drama of perfect joy, the tragedy of happiness, and she gives us her best work yet.

Author Biography

Marie-Claire Blais is the internationally revered author of more than twenty-five books, many 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 Gilles-Corbeil Prize, the Me´dicis Prize, the Molson Prize, and Guggenheim Fellowships. She divides her time between Quebec and Florida.

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