The Year of My Disappearance
Carole David's The Year of My Disappearance is a searing, surreal, darkly comic descent into a woman's psyche: as pitiless an assault on her own torments and pretences as it is on those figures lodged in her memory: lovers, strangers, her own mother, Bosch-like apparitions out of her dreams and imaginings. Through it all, a fierce combat is being waged between immolation and survival, wherein, as she has written, "I gave free range to the lives that dwelt within me." Nothing and no one is spared in this book, and yet it is wonderfully invigorating.
Poet, novelist, and short story writer, Carole David was born in Montreal, and holds a doctorate in French studies. She taught for many years at the college level. Her Manuel de poétique à l’ intention des jeunes filles (2010), won the Alain Grandbois Prize, and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Her most recent collection, L’année de ma disparition (2015), (The Year of my Disappearance), won the Prix des libraires, the Prix Québecor of the Trois Rivières International Poetry Festival, and was a finalist for the Grand prix de la ville de Montréal. She lives in Montreal, where she devotes herself to writing. Her books have been translated into English and Italian.
Donald Winkler is a translator of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and is a three-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for French to English translation, most recently in 2013 for Pierre Nepveu's collection of verse, The Major Verbs. He lives in Montreal.
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