The A List edition of one of the major achievements in recent Quebec literature — Roch Carrier’s La Guerre trilogy is a vital, moving, and assured portrait of life in Quebec.

This volume includes:

La Guerre, Yes Sir! A surrealist fable set in rural Quebec during WWI. Canadian Literature greeted its first appearance in these terms: “It is the French-Canadian writer Roch Carrier who comes closest to the significance, power, and artistry of Faulkner at his best … He might well be able to do for French Canada what Faulkner did for the American South."

Floralie, Where Are You? In the second installment, Carrier reaches back to the wedding night of the Corriveau parents, whom we first meet in La Guerre, Yes Sir!. Once again, a single night expands until it becomes a world in itself. But this time it is a very different concoction, mingling desire and guilt, nightmare and fantasy, as Anthymo drives Floralie back to his village through the forest.

Is It the Sun, Philibert? In the final installment, Young Philibert hitchhikes down to Montreal to make his fortune, and meets a different world. As he scrambles from job to job, he discovers a new Quebec — urban, industrial, and dedicated finally to the death of the person.

In this moving trilogy, Roch Carrier’s savage vision comes across with great urgency and Sheila Fischman’s fluid translations sing with vivacity and grace.

ROCH CARRIER, who studied at the Universite de Montreal and completed a doctorate in Paris at the Sorbonne, is a novelist, playwright and children's author, and past winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Formerly the director of the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Librarian of Canada, Carrier is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Officer of the Order of Canada, and he holds many honorary doctorates. A quote from Carrier’s Canadian children's classic The Hockey Sweater could be found until recently on the back of Canada’s five-dollar bill. Carrier lives in Montreal.

DONALD WINKLER was born in Winnipeg in 1940, graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1961, and did graduate study as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at the Yale School of Drama. From 1967 to 1995 he was a film director and writer at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal, and, since the 1980s, has been a translator of Quebec literature: in 1994, 2011 and 2013 he won the Governor General’s Award for French to English translation, and has been a finalist for the prize on two other occasions.

Roch Carrier's profile page

Sheila Fischman's profile page