The Winter Solstice. A diner in Montreal. A movie. A photograph. A name. What may seem like floating bits of trivia are actually the anchor points of our lives, the details that tell us who we are and where we are going. They are the air we breathe, shared between strangers without a second thought. They are the avenues through which humanity flows. Hélène Rioux's collection of interconnected stories about cab drivers and dancers, painters and writers, Russians and Mexicans, and fathers and daughters, portrays our world the way Escher would a staircase: intricate, troubling, fantastic, and always surprising.

Wednesday Night at the End of The World is a celebration of all that we have in common, whether we know it or not; that despite loneliness, none of us are truly alone.

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.

Hélène Rioux's profile page

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.

Jonathan Kaplansky's profile page

“Takes the reader on a journey that goes beyond the predictable, delivering surprises as well as mystery. It gives us an inkling of a world of fragmented individuals, held together not by the bonds of kinship, friendship, or solidarity, but by escapist needs and habits.”

Montreal Review of Books