On a Spanish-scented island, a languorous tango unfolds. People come and go, fortunes rise and fall like waves of the sea, men and women change partners — but the dance goes on. Although peopled with a colourful cast of characters, to one solitary observer this island paradise is a place where old elephants come to die. Hélène Rioux tells the exuberant tales of an ex-pat community. The elephant, used as a metaphor, becomes a portal to better understand human nature as the desires, degeneration and despair of the island’s residents are revealed in sometimes disturbing stories of irony and pathos. With an eye for detail and emotional nuance, Hélène Rioux brings a compassionate detachment to these tales of love, loss, cruelty and art as she writes of the memorable characters encountered in the Elephants’ Graveyard.

Hélène Rioux has published poetry, news articles, short stories, translations, and seven novels. She received the Prix France-Québec and the Prix ringuet de l’Académie des Lettres du Québec in 2008 forMercredi soir au Bout du monde (translated as Wednesday Night at the End of the World), the Grand Prix littéraire du Journal de Montréal, and the Prix de la Société des Ecrivains canadiens for Chambre avec baignoire in 1992. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award five times. Her novels have been translated into English, Spanish, and Bulgarian. She has translated books into French by Elizabeth Hay, Yann Martel, Jeffrey Moore and Johanna Skibsrud. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

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JONATHAN KAPLANSKY won a French Voices Award to translate Nobel Prize winning author Annie Ernaux’s La vie extérieure (Things Seen). His translation of Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic by Hervé Dumont was a finalist for the Wall Award from the Theatre Library Association. Recent translations include Jonathan Bécotte’s Like a Hurricane, Hélène Rioux’s The End of the World is Elsewhere, and the libretto of an opera by Hélène Dorion and Marie-Claire Blais entitled Yourcenar: An Island of Passions. He has also translated Dorion’s Days of Sand. Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Kaplansky now lives in Montreal.

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