Anne Hebert

Entre songe et réalité, ce récit poétique nous livre les mécanismes de la fascination et de l'obsession. Sous la douceur apparente se tapit une extreme violence.

Flora Fontages is a famous Parisian actress who has been in exile from her native Canada for twenty years. When word comes that her long-estranged daughter, Maud, has disappeared in Quebec City, she decides to return home, accepting the part of Winnie, the old crone in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, at a local theatre. The visit unexpectedly turns into a devastating confrontation with her past and present illusions, as Flora finds she must come to terms with all the roles she has ever played in life, as actress, woman, mother, child, and lover.

"There is a persistent grandeur in Anne Hébert's writing that is startling in our time and in the current literary context in English. Both the tradition and iconoclasm in the work of this French poet of North America invite us to listen to something beyond our own conventions."—W.S. Merwin

"Collected Later Novels contains the beautiful and tragic Burden of Dreams, winner of the Governor General's Award for French fiction; Aurelian, Clara, Mademoiselle, and the English Lieutenant, a shimmering fable that captivates and dazzles with its simple beauty; Am I disturbing you?, the raw and chaotic tale of a distraught young woman, nominated for the Giller Prize; and A Suit of Light, Hebert's final novel about the realization of one family's dangerous dreams."--Jacket.