Quebec literature is gaining ground in France

(Paris) Authors winning prestigious prizes, guest of honor status at the Paris Book Festival… Quebec literature has made a place for itself in France, at a time when publishers from La Belle Province are increasingly tempted by adventure on the other side of the Atlantic.

“We are currently experiencing what is perhaps the strongest cycle of recognition of Quebec literature in the world and especially in France,” notes Renaud Roussel, publisher at Éditions du Boréal, in Quebec.

“We find something refreshing there, a great freedom of tone, of themes, and all this is more assumed than in the past when there was a tendency to silence “Quebecisms”… It seems that French publishers are fond of of this originality,” he says.

A first recognition of Quebec production took place in the mid-1960s after the “Quiet Revolution”, a vast countercultural movement in Quebec, before an acceleration at the turn of the 2010s. A turning point marked in particular by the appointment of Dany Laferrière, Quebec author of Haitian origin, at the Académie française in 2013, with the addition of the poetry collection My forests of Hélène Dorion in the baccalaureate program in 2022 or by the awarding of the Médicis prize to Kevin Lambert for May our joy remain in 2023.

However, the appetite for Quebec authors in France does not always occur without problems, linked to the use of the language.

Vitality and “punk” atmosphere

“It’s a question that we must ask ourselves systematically for each sale of rights,” says Roxane Desjardins, author and publisher at the Quebec house Les Herbes Rouges: “Are we adapting? How far ? »

On a case-by-case basis, some publishers opt for footnotes explaining unknown terms, others for a glossary at the end of the book.

“There are certain words that I was asked to adapt. I did it when it didn’t bother me,” says author and director Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette. For his book The woman who fled (released in the Pocket Book in 2017), she also “put a small preface which situates the importance of the historical moment for readers”.

For Benoît Virot, of the young French publishing house Le Nouvel Attila, this difference is precisely what makes Quebec books successful in France.

“French-speaking authors, but not French, like Quebec authors, come to scratch the surface of polite French as we practice it, import vocabulary, but above all forms of spirit, of style, a decentring. We are far from just linguistic curiosity,” he insists.

Across the Atlantic, the launches of publishing houses are increasing, testifying to the vitality of the local scene.

“The Quebec publishing landscape is changing. We grew up in a free, quite punk atmosphere, full of vitality, which is felt today in a certain way of thinking about literature,” explains M.^me Gardens.

This vitality is undoubtedly also explained by the place given to other stories, to feminist and indigenous literature, to literary formalism, in which Benoît Virot, Renaud Roussel and even Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette abound.

Without forgetting this new look at French literature from this emancipating Quebec scene.

“As there has been this awareness of the wealth of Quebec publishing, there has been a reaffirmation of independence. (…) Today, French works are classified as foreign literature in Quebec, which was not at all the case before,” underlines Mr. Virot.