Anima
A man, returning home one evening after work, discovers his wife brutally murdered, lying in a pool of blood. A cat, their cat, a domesticated animal, tells the man the macabre tale of what happened, and in the second chapter, birds at the window continue the tale. This novel of grotesque realism marries separate, delimited worlds: the animal and the human, the here and away, and the wars of yesterday and today.
Wajdi Mouawad is a Lebanese-Canadian writer, actor, and director now living in France.
Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montreal.
Playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad was born in Lebanon and then lived in Quebec before settling in France. His play Incendies won critical acclaim and huge success as a film by Denis Villeneuve. In 2009, Mouawad received the Prix du Théâtre of the Académie française. His novel Anima, published in French in 2012 and translated into German, Italian, Spanish, and Catalan, won le Grand Prix Thyde Monnier de la Société des gens de lettres, le prix de la Méditerranée, le prix littéraire du deuxième roman de Lecture en tête (Laval), le prix du jury de l’Algue d’or, et le prix catalan Llibreter du roman étranger.
Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montreal. Her translations of plays by Quebec’s most prominent playwrights have been published and produced across Canada and abroad. In her work as a literary manager and dramaturge, she has directed numerous translation residencies and international exchange projects. She was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Gaboriau has twice won the Governor General’s Award for Translation: in 1996, for Daniel Danis’s Stone and Ashes, and in 2010, for Wajdi Mouawad’s Forests. She was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015.
