“Neil Bishop has … revived this novel, Death of the Spider, in the true light of its prophecy (be it but dreamed), in the bright light too of its modernism, for this novel is both a poetic indictment of our contemporary society and a forerunner of the feminist novel—while admirably avoiding the traps of theory and rigidity. The author draws us into our very depths, our own submissiveness, our own hereditary sheep-like docility, she shuts us in with her main character, staring at the spider on the ceiling, in that secret bedroom of rebellion where this nameless heroine has withdrawn to think about her fate which is also ours and where she and we are left, alone with the shameful images of our own condition, our own, often willing, bondage.” – from the preface by Marie-Claire Blais

Michèle Mailhot
Michèle Mailhot was born in 1932 in Montreal. She is the winner of the 1990 Governor General’s Fiction Award for her novel Le Passé Composé. She lives and works in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The translation of her novel Death of the Spider (1991) was nominated for a Governor General’s Award for Translation in 1992.

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Neil Bishop is a French-English translator who lives in Newfoundland.

Neil B. Bishop's profile page

Born in 1939 in Québec, Marie-Claire Blais continues to dominate the literary landscape. Having published her first novel at the age of twenty, she has gone on to publish twenty novels to date in France and Quebec—all of which have been translated into English—as well as five plays and several collections of poetry. All of her writings have met with international acclaim.Talon has published her American Notebooks, a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer.Winner of the Prix Médicis, the Prix Belgo-Canadien, the Prix France-Québec, and many others, Blais continues to devote herself to work that is proud and exacting. Most recently, she has been invited, as one of the very few foreigners allowed, to join Belgium’s Academy of French Language and Literature.

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• Short-listed, Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation