A fusion of biography and history, art and politics, told through the lives branching off one family tree.

In Fear the Mirror, Cora Siré brings together thirteen stories of moments that have marked the dark intersections within her own history. A feminist mother who fled Estonia. A father who arrived in Canada with nothing but a violin. A Catalan boy whose parent is dying. A love triangle among novelists. Bodies stolen in the night and never found. Blending essay, memoir, and fiction, the Montréal author draws on her encounters in Latin America and elsewhere to compose loving and conflicted portraits - of family members, writers, filmmakers, and gravediggers - culminating in the persistent legacies and strange alchemies that haunt the person she sees in the mirror. In this masterful fifth book, Siré has written her most urgent, beguiling, and personal work to date.

Cora Siré lives in Montréal where she writes fiction, essays and poetry. She is the author of two novels, Behold Things Beautiful (Signature Editions, 2016), The Other Oscar (Quattro Books, 2016) and Signs of Subversive Innocents (Signature Editions, 2014), a collection of poetry. Her work has been shortlisted for various literary prizes. Born in Canada, she often writes of elsewheres, drawing on her encounters in faraway places as well as her family’s history of displacement.

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"The collection resonates with childhood recollections, poetry, historical references, and intriguing characters, not the least of whom are a strong-minded mother and an elusive grandmother. The memoirist narratives in this collection are rich in rhythms that reveal lives complicated by war, displacement, and immigration." - Montreal Review of Books