Bestselling author Alice Livingstone is dead. She leaves her philosopher husband, Antoine, to deal with her legacy, towards which he feels increasingly estranged. Confronted with his wife's much-reported disappearance, Antoine revisits their past relationship: open and liberal on the outside, but constrained and deviant on the inside. The news of the day (the death of JFK Jr., the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk), which plays on the television running in the novel's background, gradually becomes significant in the lives of the protagonists - as revealed in Alice's mysterious, posthumous last novel, A Pure Heart. Bit by bit, as we move closer to the novel's centre, its narrators lose reliability; their discourses and pretenses become more and more confused, fragmentary, and misleading. Good intentions become corrupted and appearances prove to be deceiving. Impurity's conclusion is as gripping as it
is asphyxiating. After his masterpieces The Orange Grove and The Obese Christ, Larry Tremblay, one of Québec's most accomplished novelists and playwrights of the last two decades, offers his readers a riveting mystery, a self-reflective enigma whose decoding places on trial the
literary form itself.

A playful and macabre narrative tour de force, Impurity weaves a fascinating web of interlocking narratives in an epistolary puzzle connecting forms with voices, and voices with revelations.

Larry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor and specialist in Kathakali, an elaborate dance theatre form which he has studied on numerous trips to India. He has published more than twenty books as a playwright, poet, novelist, and essayist, and he is one of Québec's most-produced and translated playwrights (his plays have been translated into twelve languages). Tremblay's plays, premiered for the most part in Montréal, have been produced, often in translation, in Italy, France, Belgium, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Argentina, and Scotland. Tremblay collaborated with Welsh Canadian composer John Metcalf on a new opera: A Chair in Love, a concert version of which premiered in Montréal in April 2005. The following year he was awarded the Canada Council Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for his contribution to the theatre. He was a finalist in 2008 and 2011 for the Siminovitch Prize. One of Québec's most versatile writers, Tremblay currently teaches acting at the École supérieure de théâtre of Université du Québec à Montréal.

A playful and macabre narrative tour de force, structured like a matryoshka doll, Impurity weaves a complex web of interlocking narratives in multiple voices and a variety of forms. The bestselling author Alice Livingston is dead, leaving her philosopher husband, Antoine, dealing with a legacy towards which he has felt increasingly estranged. Confronted with his wife's much reported disappearance, Antoine revisits their past relationship: open and liberated on the outside, but constrained and even deviant on the inside. The news of the day (the death of JFK Junior, the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk, etc.) announced by the television running in the novel's background gradually becomes significant in the lives of the protagonists - as revealed in Alice's last book. As narrators of the novel become less and less reliable, good intentions become corrupted, appearances prove to be deceiving, and Impurity's multiple plots come to a gripping, asphyxiating conclusion.