News from Edouard

Description

Edouard, whom we met in The Duchess and the Commoner, a common shoe salesman at the feet of the well-heeled by day; but the "Duchess of Langeais," star of the transvestite shows on the Main by night, has been left an inheritance by his mother, Victoire. With this money, he sails on the ocean-liner Liberte to Paris, an idealized, glorious foreign place, the art, culture and architecture of which he imagines will be familiar to him from the books and movies he has read and seen. But when he arrives in Paris, his constant encounters with the realities of the primitive and inconvenient aspects of daily life in Europe bring him face to face with the recognition that France is not exclusively the liberating, glorious place he had imagined it to be. The divine Paris, it turns out, does indeed have feet of clay. All of this he records in a diary, which he will send to his sister-in-law, "the fat woman." Will Edouard survive the disillusionment of both his journey to the imperial centre, and his return to what he previously considered the dull and dreary reality of his life in Montreal? While all of the six novels in this series recount the moving, hilarious, angry and exotic lives of the generation inhabiting the "Plateau" of Montreal just on the cusp of Quebec's metamorphosis from the oppression of colonialism to a culture with its own identity and language, News from Edouard, volume four in this six-part series of semi-autobiographical novels, is the most pointedly explicit at the level of Tremblay's sweeping metaphor of Quebec's search for identity, dignity, pride and independence from both its French and its British (Canadian) colonial past.

Michel Tremblay One of the most produced and the most prominent playwrights in the history of Canadian theatre, Michel Tremblay has received countless prestigious honours and accolades. His dramatic, literary and autobiographical works have long enjoyed remarkable international popularity, including translations of his plays that have achieved huge success in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. Awards and Recognition* Prix du Grand (2009) La Traversee de la ville (Lemeac Editeur Inc.) Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix (2006) Globe and Mail Top 100 Books (2003) Birth of a Bookworm Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play (2000) For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again Chalmers Awards (1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1978, 1986, 1989, 2000) Governor General's Performing Arts Award (1999) Molson Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts (1994) Louis-Hemon Prize (1994) Montreal Book Fair Grand Public Prize (1994) Banff Centre National Award (1992) Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France (1991) Chevalier of the Order of Quebec (1990) San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Festival Long-Standing Public Service Award (1989) CBC Anik Prize (1988) Athanase-David Lifetime Achievement Prize (1988) Quebec-Paris Prize (1985) Chevalier of Arts and Letters of France (1984) Sheila Fischman Born in Saskatchewan, Sheila Fischman is a member of the Order of Canada and has a doctorate from the University of Waterloo. A two-time Governor General's Award winner, Fischman has translated from French to English more than a hundred novels by such prominent Quebec writers as Michel Tremblay, Jacques Poulin, Anne Hebert, Francois Gravel, Marie-Claire Blais and Roch Carrier. In 2008, Fischman was awarded the prestigious Molson Prize for her outstanding contributions to Canadian literature.

"Michel Tremblay's long labour of love...is a lasting study of and tribute to his own working-class origins that should stand in time as a literary landmark." -- Toronto Star