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Fiction General

Voices in Time

by (author) Hugh MacLennan

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2011
Category
General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773524941
    Publish Date
    Apr 2011
    List Price
    $22.95
  • Downloadable audio file

    ISBN
    9780228010395
    Publish Date
    Apr 2022
    List Price
    $17.99
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773586468
    Publish Date
    Apr 2011
    List Price
    $9.95

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Description

In the 1980s the Bureaucracy eliminated all knowledge of the past in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. In 2030 André Gervais discovers two metal boxes containing manuscripts, diaries, and other personal papers that have somehow survived and asks an old man, John Wellfleet, to use these documents to discover the past. In doing so, Wellfleet learns the truth about two relatives: his older cousin Timothy Wellfleet, a Montreal TV journalist at the time of the 1970 War Measures Act, and his stepfather, Conrad Dehmel, a German scholar struggling to keep his Jewish fiancée and himself safe from Hitler's Gestapo. Hugh MacLennan skillfully juxtaposes the insanity of life in Nazi Germany, the political climate of Montreal in the 1960s, and the perspective of an old man looking back on the conditions that led to world destruction as the background to an unforgettable love story.

About the author

Born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990) taught at McGill University from 1951 to 1981 and wrote novels and essays that helped define Canadian literature. His novels include Barometer Rising (1941), Two Solitudes (1945), Each Man's Son (1951), The Watch That Ends the Night (1959), Return of the Sphinx (1967), and Voices in Time (1980). He also published several nonfiction works, including Cross Country (1949), Thirty and Three (1955), The Scotchman’s Return and Other Essays (1960), and The Colour of Canada (1967).

Hugh MacLennan's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"Voices in Time is Hugh MacLennan's greatest novel." Elspeth Cameron, author of Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life