Wintersleep (Sommeil d'hiver) is a collection of five short plays by internationally acclaimed Quebecois author, Marie-Claire Blais. Appearing for the first time in an English translation, these plays allow anglophones to appreciate Marie-Claire Blais' range as a dramatist. The plays are known to francophones in their original publication by Les editions de la pleine lune; four of the plays have also been broadcast in French on the F.M. network of Radio Canada.

The works themselves arewritten in the form of chamber plays with the addition of elements from the ballet and recitative. Three of the plays are for two voices, one has three voices, and the other is written for 13 characters with additional voices. The plays can be produced on radio, T.V. or on stage, in each case with varying effects. Nigel Spencer's translation recreates the disturbing yet lyrical, ethereal yet gritty, effect of Marie-Claire Blais's evocative French prose.

Written with great prescience in the late '70s and early '80s, the plays have gained a sharp new resonance in the '90s. They present a shattered psychic landscape, yet one that is not lacking in hope nor in the daring and balance they demand of author, actor and director alike.

Born in 1939 in Québec, Marie-Claire Blais continues to dominate the literary landscape. Having published her first novel at the age of twenty, she has gone on to publish twenty novels to date in France and Quebec—all of which have been translated into English—as well as five plays and several collections of poetry. All of her writings have met with international acclaim.Talon has published her American Notebooks, a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer.Winner of the Prix Médicis, the Prix Belgo-Canadien, the Prix France-Québec, and many others, Blais continues to devote herself to work that is proud and exacting. Most recently, she has been invited, as one of the very few foreigners allowed, to join Belgium’s Academy of French Language and Literature.

Marie-Claire Blais' profile page

Nigel Spencer's work includes acting, directing, teaching, educational research and training, journalism, subtitling and co-scripting films, as well as script-doctoring.

He taught the first bilingual graduate course on Comparative Canadian Dramaturgy (l'Université de Sherbrooke), and a performance-based course on Shakespeare at the State University of New York (Plattsburgh).

He has published six books of translated work by Marie-Claire Blais, including Thunder and Light, Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, and Mai at the Predators' Ball, which earned him three Governor General's Literary Awards for Translation.

His theatre translations include three plays by Evelyne de la Chenelière, one of which, September, will be produced by Canadian Stage in Toronto in 2020.

Nigel Spencer's profile page

"Lyrical, elliptical musicality…"

by Nigel Spencer

In an excellent introduction, Nigel Spencer, the translator, contextualizes these lyrical, elliptical works...all five plays feature female voices asserting themselves in painful dialogue with male partners.  Oscillating between intimate personal detail and philosophical abstraction, between tentativeness and aggression, each play probes a different sensibility, a different tension.
The dialogue is rendered even more poignant by the accompanying musicality of Blais' long poetic lines.
Perhaps the most evocative of all is the study in contrasts, "FEVER"--a beautifully orchestrated dialogue between a wife and a husband in which she unveils his hypocrisy and her complicity against the exoticized backdrop of Morocco.
Reading these enigmatic musings set amidst highly visualized backgrounds or sets, one participates in the equivocal, tenuous relations between men and women, speech and silence, oppression and freedom.  As Blais, through the voice of her translator, so eloquently puts it: "But here I am, and he listens.  It is late.  At least, he seems to listen."
-Cathy Mezei--BOOKS IN CANADA, Summer 1999.