Shortlisted for the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize • Winner of the 2023 ReLit Award for Fiction • Longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award
Homage to Jean Genet's antihero and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of the Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.
As a millworkers' strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions start to escalate between the workers?but when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. Strapping and unabashed, likeable but callow, by day he walks the picket lines and at night moves like a mythic Adonis through the ranks of young men who flock to his apartment for sex. As the dispute hardens and both sides refuse to yield, sand stalls the gears of the economic machine and the tinderbox of class struggle and entitlement ignites in a firestorm of passions carnal and violent. Trenchant social drama, a tribute to Jean Genet's antihero, and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of France's Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.
Autorentext
Born in 1992, Kevin Lambert grew up in Chicoutimi, Quebec. He earned a master's degree in creative writing at the Université de Montréal. His widely acclaimed first novel, You Will Love What You Have Killed, was a finalist for Quebec's Booksellers' Prize. His second novel, Querelle of Roberval, won France's Marquis de Sade Prize, and was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Médicis and the literary prize of the Paris newspaper Le Monde. In Canada, Querelle of Roberval won the Prix Ringuet of the Quebec Academy of Arts and Letters, was a finalist for the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal and won or was a finalist for six other literary prizes. Kevin Lambert lives in Montreal.
Klappentext
Homage to Jean Genet's antihero and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of the Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.
When millworkers in Roberval, a northern Quebec logging town, go on strike, the conflict rips the close-knit community apart, and despite the workers' solidarity, their individual struggles and demands further escalate tensions within the group. They remain united by the desire to escape poverty and exact revenge on their boss, but when Brian Ferland decrees a lockout and awakens in them a buried rage, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashingly cosmopolitan newcomer from Montreal. By day, Querelle walks the picket lines with his cohort, but at night he breaks bottles on the beach and settles scores with baseball bats and the town's privileged young men flock to his apartment for sex. As positions harden and both sides refuse to yield, sand stalls the gears of the economic machine and the tinderbox of class struggle and entitlement ignites in a firestorm of passions carnal and violent.