East-end Montreal in the mid-1920s. A popular restaurant is razed by an arsonist. Seventy-five people perish in the inferno. While strolling with his wheelchair-ridden father, a man furtively salvages a charred icon from the ruins. He is Remouald Tremblay, a self-effacing bank clerk whose pocket holds a treasured rabbit's foot and whose memory contains an unspeakable hell.

Originally published in 1994 as L'Immaculee conception, this is the novel that established Gaetan Soucy as a powerful new literary force in Quebec. In it, he echoes the writing of Edgar Allan Poe and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Immaculate Conception was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2006.

Gaetan Soucy has written four novels to acclaim in Canada and abroad, including The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches, Atonement, Vaudeville, and The Immaculate Conception, which was a finalist for the 2006 Scotiabank Griller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation. Soucy teaches philosophy and lives in Montreal.

Gaetan Soucy's profile page

Lazer Lederhendler is a full-time freelance translator specializing in contemporary Québécois fiction and nonfiction. His work has earned him many distinctions in Canada and abroad, including multiple nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Award, which he won in 2008 for the translation of Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner. He is also the translator of Gaétan Soucy’s novel, The Immaculate Conception, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for French to English translation, and the winner of the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation awarded by the Quebec Writers’ Federation. Lazer Lederhendler lives in Montreal. 

Lazer Lederhendler's profile page

• Short-listed, Scotiabank Giller Prize
• Short-listed, QWF Prize for Translation
• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Awards: Translation
• Short-listed, ReLit Awards - Novel

It takes a short time to read and a long time to forget. It has the power of a Grimm fairy tale...Nothing is what it first seems.

Toronto Star