Pasha Malla, « Too Different And Too Familiar: The Challenge of French-Canadian Literature », The New Yorker, May 26, 2015
« In Pablo Strauss’s commendable English adaptation, Bock’s language crackles with the energy of a Québécois folk song, impassioned and celebratory but also melancholy and cheekily ironic. »
« Meanwhile, the Anglophone Montreal publisher Véhicule Press recently dedicated half of its Esplanade Books imprint to translations from French. The editor Dimitri Nasrallah, who spearheaded the project, believes that Quebec writing is developing an international sensibility, and that a Quebec-based publishing house is in an ideal position to bring that work to a broader audience. The series includes Geneviève Pettersen’s bestseller “The Goddess of Fireflies” and a novel by Jacques Poulin, whose “English is Not a Magic Language” has earned comparisons to Paul Auster. Esplanade has also purchased the North American rights to the works of Eric Plamondon, whose “1984” trilogy has been compared to Richard Brautigan; Nasrallah describes “Apple S,” its final installment, as “an experimental, fragmentary, fictionalized biography of Steve Jobs.”
Éric Plamondon 