Readopolis (Literature in Translation Series) - Softcover

Bertrand Laverdure

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1771662980 ISBN 13: 9781771662987

Publisher: Book*hug Press, 2017

Synopsis

From award-winning writer Bertrand Laverdure comes Readopolis , a novel translated by Oana Avasilichioaei. It's 2006 and down-and-out protagonist Ghislain works as a reader for a publishing house in Montreal. He's bored with all the wannabe writers who are determined to leave a trace of their passage on earth with their feeble attempts at literary arts. Obsessed by literature and its future (or lack thereof), he reads everything he can in order to translate reality into the literary delirium that is Readopolis--a world imagined out of Chicago and Montreal, with few inhabitants, a convenience store, a parrot, and all kinds of dialogues running amok: cinematic, epistolary, theatrical, and Socratic. In the pages of Readopolis , Laverdure playfully examines the idea that human beings are more connected by their reading abilities than by anything else. Funny and sardonic, whimsical and tragic, this postmodern novel with touches of David Foster Wallace and Raymond Queneau portrays the global village of readers that the Internet created, even before the 2.0 revolution. Praise for Readopolis "" Readopolis is a stylistically ebullient interrogation of the effect that literature has on the readers who consume it."" -Steven W. Beattie, Quill and Quire ""With Readopolis , Laverdure has created a beautiful, humorous jumble of a book."" --Dean Garlick, Montreal Review of Books "" Readopolis is at times a panorama of Montreal literary culture, at times a condemnation of the precarity and banality of cultural economies, at times a rich homage to friends and to hope, as well as to the wonders of the act of reading itself."" --Erin Moure, Tarpaulin Sky ""In Readopolis , Oana Avasilichioaei has risen to and matched the stylistic acrobatics of Bertrand Laverdure's Lectoéme . The many voices of Quebecois writing sing through in this intelligent translation-a vertiginous ode to the pure, if rarely rewarded, pursuit of literature."" --Jury Citation for the Governor General's Literary Awards, Translation

About this title

About the Authors

BERTRAND LAVERDURE is the author of six novels, including Universal Bureau of Copyrights and Readopolis (winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation), both translated by Oana Avasilichioaei. His many poetry publications include Cascadeuse and Sept et demi. He was awarded the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts (1999) and the Rina Lasnier Prize for Poetry (2003) for Les forêts. He was a literary chronicler on MAtv and CIBL Radio, and Poet Laureate of Montreal from 2015 to 2017.

OANA AVASILICHIOAEI is a Montreal-based poet, translator, and artist. She is the author of many books, including Expeditions of a Chimaera (with Erín Moure; 2009), We, Beasts (2012; winner of the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry) and Limbinal (2015). Previous translations include Suzanne Leblanc's The Thought House of Philippa (co-translated with Ingrid Pam Dick; 2015), Catherine Lalonde’s The Faerie Devouring (winner of the 2018 Cole Foundation Prize for Translation), three books by Bertrand Laverdure, including Universal Bureau of Copyrights (finalist for the 2015 ReLit Award, Readopolis (winner of the 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation), and The Neptune Room (finalist for the 2020 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation).

Edition details

• Publisher: Book*hug Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1771662980
• ISBN 13: 9781771662987
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Oana Avasilichioaei