Antonine Maillet – författare

Winner of the 1979 Governor General's Award for fiction, Antonine Maillet's virtuoso creation, The Tale of Don L'Orignal, is now back in print. Maillet's tale begins one day, not so very long ago but back in the youth of the world, when a hay-covered island materialized off shore, an island populated by fleas who soon took human form. The leader of this uncouth crew of have-nots, Don l'Orignal, wore a moose-antler crown as his badge of office. At his right hand were his brave lieutenants: his son, Noume, and his general, Michel-Archange. The general's wife, the doughty charwoman, spy, and rabble-rouser La Sagouine, had one finger in every pie and one raised to her neighbour, La Sainte.The Flea Islanders were constantly at odds with the almost as clever but far more civilized upper crust of the mainland village: the mayoress, the schoolteacher, the merchant, the banker. When they invaded and tried to steal a keg of molasses, the outcome of the mock-heroic battle was unclear, except that La Sainte's son, the hapless young Citrouille, and Adeline, the merchant's lovely daughter, had fallen in love.With the insider's accumulation of oral history, gossip, and shrewd hindsight, Antonine Maillet has conjured up a fictional Acadia that her ancestors would relish. Perhaps those who could read it would have even understood it: she wrote Don l'Orignal in a version of 16th-century domestic French that she adapted for modern readers. In this far-fetched, but always entertaining fable, Maillet holds up a mirror to Acadian history and to an all too fallible human nature.

In On the Eighth Day, Antonine Maillet imagines a solution to the world's problems: a wider and more exuberant world, with its right more left and its left more right, created on "the day when everything is dared and anything is possible." She spins a tale of two brothers — a giant carved from an oak tree and a scamp shaped out of bread dough — born one remarkable night when magic made wishes come true. Thrilled to have a son to call their own, Mr. Goodman and Mrs. Goodwife play favourite and bicker over which creation is the better child, causing a rift in the family.To ease the fighting, John-Bear and Big-as-a-Fist decide to set off to seek their fortunes. But first they must visit their godmother, Clara-Galante, to receive their inheritance. A witch who lives deep in the woods, she gives them three wishes and some kind words, before sending the heroes "out into the world to follow their curious destiny beyond the hills on the horizon," left foot first for good luck.Wending their way through unforgettable lands — the Timeless Village, the Upside-Down Town, the Path of the Vicious Circle — the lads make many strange friends, who, peculiar as they are, seem strangely familiar. But, wherever Life leads them, Death lurks close behind.A wonderful picaresque akin to a cheerful Gulliver's Travels, a comic Pilgrim's Progress or an Acadian Wizard of Oz, On the Eighth Day is a fast-moving tale starring richly developed characters in a funny and poignant road story in which allegory gains power by taking a back seat to enchantment.

The premise is deceptively simple: a dirt-poor charwoman and former prostitute leans on her mop and tells her life story. But what a story! As she reminisces and rants, telling stories about herself, her friends and neighbours, the priest and his church, and every other aspect of life in her village, she is actually telling the story of Acadie.More than 30 years after its first publication in English, and five years since Wayne Grady completed this new translation, La Sagouine is available in this new, updated edition. Faithfully interpreting Antonine Maillet's distinctive text, Wayne Grady brings out the cultural richness of the language as well as La Sagouine's strength of character and irrepressible humour.La Sagouine launched the careers of both Antonine Maillet and the actress Viola Léger. With sales of over 100,000 copies, it brought the existence of Acadian literature to a wide and admiring audience.