Our upcoming book club will feature a
Catalan novel, and will take place
Tuesday March 12 2024 at 6:30 pm. This will be a
hybrid event: in person in room C-2059 of the Carrefour des Arts et des Sciences de l’Université de Montréal, at 3150, rue Jean Brillant (2nd floor) and on Zoom. The link for the event will be sent after registration.
The book chosen for this session is "
Boulder", by Eva Baltasar. The discussion will be held in
French and moderated by Sarah Labelle, doctoral student in comparative literature at the Université de Montréal.
Please confirm your presence
before March 10 at the following address:
lisezleurope-mtl@goethe.de.
About the novel:
Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize.
Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname ‘Boulder’. When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn’t know how to say no – and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien.
With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love.
Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her pre-eminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world – and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.
(
andotherstories.org)
Translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanchez.
About the author:
Eva Baltasar has published ten volumes of poetry to widespread acclaim. Her debut novel, Permafrost, received the 2018 Premi Llibreter from Catalan booksellers and was shortlisted for France’s 2020 Prix Médicis for Best Foreign Book . It is the first novel in a triptych which aims to explore the universes of three different women in the first person. The author lives a simple life with her wife and two daughters in a village near the mountains.
(
andotherstories.org)
The book can be obtained (in French) at the following bookstores:
Librairie Gallimard: (10% discount for Lisez l’Europe members)
librairie@gallimardmontreal.com
514 499-2012
Librairie du Square au Carré St-Louis:
librairiedusquare@librairiedusquare.com
514 845-7617
Librairie du Square - Outremont:
outremont@librairiedusquare.com
514 303-0612
Also available as an eBook (in English) on
indigo.ca
French and English copies are also available through the
Grande Bibliothèque and the
library network of the City of Montreal.
Catalan copies can be borrowed from the
Médiathèque en études catalanes.
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