This award-winning novel by playwright Wadji Mouawad is a thriller and a road novel – written in the North African storytelling tradition in which events unfold from an animal point of view.

The novel opens with a brutal murder: the protagonist arrives home to find his wife lying in a pool of blood. Driven by grief and the need to find whoever did this – “I want to see his face, I want to know who he is” – the protagonist sets out on desperate journey from Montreal to Indian reserves along the Canada–U.S. border, south through Civil War sites in the Midwest, to Animas, New Mexico. The furious odyssey awakens long-buried memories that make present circumstances even more painful.

This masterful novel is told in a bestiary of voices, more than fifty animals, birds, and insects, each with their own characterization and style of speaking, reveal the unflattering contrast between the human and the natural. Violent and dark, the novel nevertheless moves beyond the thriller genre to become a book of multiple levels, rich in symbolism and open to complex interpretation. While set in North America, Mouawad’s Lebanese roots suffuse the text, which becomes an examination of cultural influences and at the same time an excavation of childhood trauma and the legacy of war.

Anima has resonated with readers worldwide. It’s been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, and Catalan. It won the Thyde Monnier Grand Prize from the Société des Gens de Lettres, the Mediterranean Prize, the Literary Prize for a Second Novel in Laval, the Golden Alga Award, the Phoenix Award (as part of the Beirut Spring Festival), and the Catalan Llibreter Prize for Foreign Novel, all in 2012 and 2013. In 2015, Anima won the Lire en Poche, a prize awarded annually in France in celebration of the paperback book. An elegant translation by Linda Gaboriau brings this celebrated novel to English readers.

Isolating in Nogent-sur-Marne, Wajdi Mouawad embarks upon a spectacular inner voyage, travelling from his own microcosm to the eye of the Big Bang. We follow him from Peter Handke’s office to his father’s retirement home, from the banks of the Saint Lawrence to Montréal, Greece, Greenland, and the Lebanon of his childhood. Through Kafka and Star Wars, by way of French phonetics and the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, he explores the razor’s edge of madness, conjures a dream shared by all humanity, and probes the bestiality of our everyday lives.

Mouawad’s plays, novels, and essays speak to us all, confronting our ghosts, addressing the obscure and the impenetrable, which dissipate as they are put into words. The musings in Speaking through the Night, born out of solitude, confront the mysteries of the universe with supple introspection.

This award-winning novel by playwright Wadji Mouawad is a thriller and a road novel – written in the North African storytelling tradition in which events unfold from an animal point of view.

The novel opens with a brutal murder: the protagonist arrives home to find his wife lying in a pool of blood. Driven by grief and the need to find whoever did this – “I want to see his face, I want to know who he is” – the protagonist sets out on desperate journey from Montreal to Indian reserves along the Canada–U.S. border, south through Civil War sites in the Midwest, to Animas, New Mexico. The furious odyssey awakens long-buried memories that make present circumstances even more painful.

This masterful novel is told in a bestiary of voices, more than fifty animals, birds, and insects, each with their own characterization and style of speaking, reveal the unflattering contrast between the human and the natural. Violent and dark, the novel nevertheless moves beyond the thriller genre to become a book of multiple levels, rich in symbolism and open to complex interpretation. While set in North America, Mouawad’s Lebanese roots suffuse the text, which becomes an examination of cultural influences and at the same time an excavation of childhood trauma and the legacy of war.

Anima has resonated with readers worldwide. It’s been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, and Catalan. It won the Thyde Monnier Grand Prize from the Société des Gens de Lettres, the Mediterranean Prize, the Literary Prize for a Second Novel in Laval, the Golden Alga Award, the Phoenix Award (as part of the Beirut Spring Festival), and the Catalan Llibreter Prize for Foreign Novel, all in 2012 and 2013. In 2015, Anima won the Lire en Poche, a prize awarded annually in France in celebration of the paperback book. An elegant translation by Linda Gaboriau brings this celebrated novel to English readers.

Isolating in Nogent-sur-Marne, Wajdi Mouawad embarks upon a spectacular inner voyage, travelling from his own microcosm to the eye of the Big Bang. We follow him from Peter Handke’s office to his father’s retirement home, from the banks of the Saint Lawrence to Montréal, Greece, Greenland, and the Lebanon of his childhood. Through Kafka and Star Wars, by way of French phonetics and the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, he explores the razor’s edge of madness, conjures a dream shared by all humanity, and probes the bestiality of our everyday lives.

Mouawad’s plays, novels, and essays speak to us all, confronting our ghosts, addressing the obscure and the impenetrable, which dissipate as they are put into words. The musings in Speaking through the Night, born out of solitude, confront the mysteries of the universe with supple introspection.