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THE FUTURE longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award!

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Biblioasis is thrilled to share that The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou, has been longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award! The longlist was announced on January 14, and can be seen here.

Vancouver Public Library writes in their nominating comment,

“Set in an alternate dystopian French colonial Detroit, destroyed by wars and climate change, Gloria, grief-stricken by the mysterious death of her daughter, comes looking for her granddaughters. In her search for her family, Gloria slowly builds bonds and embraces a new family of survivors. Above all, this novel is about the resilience of relationships and the primal desire to create a new life and community. VPL staff selected this novel because of its inspiring characters and wonderful translation, and it’s demonstrated popularity among our patrons. Catherine Leroux is an award winning author.”

The Dublin Literary Award honours excellence in world literature since 1996. Presented annually, the Award is one of the most significant literature prizes in the world, worth €100,000 for a single work of international fiction written or a work of fiction translated into English. The Future is one of the 71 books nominated by 83 libraries from 34 countries around the world this year.

The shortlist will be announced on March 25, 2025, and the winner will be announced May 22, 2025.

Get your copy of The Future here!

ABOUT THE FUTURE

Winner of Canada Reads 2024 • Longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award • Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction • One of Tor.com’s Can’t Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of Kirkus Reviews’ Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • A Kirkus Reviews Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • A CBC Books Bestselling Canadian Book of the Week

In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.

When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.

Photo Credit: Justine Latour

ABOUT CATHERINE LEROUX

Catherine Leroux is a Quebec novelist, translator and editor born in 1979. Her novel Le mur mitoyen won the France-Quebec Prize and its English version, The Party Wall, was nominated for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Future won CBC’s Canada Reads 2024, received the Jacques-Brossard award for speculative fiction and was nominated for the Quebec Booksellers Prize. Catherine also won the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for her translation of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. Two of her novels are currently being adapted for the screen. Her latest book, Peuple de verre, a speculative novel about the housing crisis, came out in April 2024. She lives in Montreal with her two children.

ABOUT SUSAN OURIOU

Photo Credit: Jaz Hart Studio Inc

Susan Ouriou is an award-winning fiction writer and literary translator with over sixty translations and co-translations of fiction, non-fiction, children’s and young-adult literature to her credit. She has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation for which she has also been shortlisted on five other occasions. Many of her young adult translations have made the IBBY Honor List. She has also published two novels, Damselfish and Nathan, edited the anthologies Beyond Words – Translating the World and Languages of Our Land – Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec and contributed a one-act play to the upcoming anthology Many Mothers – Seven Skies. Susan lives in Calgary, Alberta.

QUERELLE OF ROBERVAL longlisted for the DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD!

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We’re excited to share that the Dublin Literary Award has announced their 2024 longlist, which includes Kevin Lambert’s Querelle of Roberval, translated by Donald Winkler. Biblioasis published the novel in 2022, three years after its French edition by Héliotrope.

The Dublin Literary Award is based on nominations from libraries. Bibliothèque de Québec writes of Querelle of Roberval, in their nomination:

“This novel is sad, funny and tragic at the same time, and so close to reality. A book that you read while holding your breath, wondering if the protagonist would dare to make the good choices, while you are worrying for his destiny. Clearly a powerful novel, hard to forget.”

This is the first of Lambert’s books to be nominated for the Dublin Literary Award. The Dublin Literary Award honours excellence in world literature since 1996. Presented annually, the Award is one of the most significant literature prizes in the world, worth €100,000 for a single work of international fiction written or a work of fiction translated into English. The shortlist will be announced on March 26, 2024.

Biblioasis is a literary press based in Windsor, Ontario. Since 2004 we have published the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and literature in translation.

Get your copy of Querelle of Roberval here!

Check out Kevin Lambert’s first novel You Will Love What You Have Killed here.

ABOUT QUERELLE OF ROBERVAL

Shortlisted for the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize • Winner of the 2023 ReLit Award for Fiction • Longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award

Homage to Jean Genet’s antihero and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of the Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.

As a millworkers’ strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions start to escalate between the workers—but when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. Strapping and unabashed, likeable but callow, by day he walks the picket lines and at night moves like a mythic Adonis through the ranks of young men who flock to his apartment for sex. As the dispute hardens and both sides refuse to yield, sand stalls the gears of the economic machine and the tinderbox of class struggle and entitlement ignites in a firestorm of passions carnal and violent. Trenchant social drama, a tribute to Jean Genet’s antihero, and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of France’s Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.

Credit: Gregory Augendre-Cambron

ABOUT KEVIN LAMBERT

Born in 1992, Kevin Lambert grew up in Chicoutimi, Quebec. He earned a master’s degree in creative writing at the Université de Montréal. His widely acclaimed first novel, You Will Love What You Have Killed, was a finalist for Quebec’s Booksellers’ Prize (Prix des libraires). His second novel, Querelle of Roberval, won France’s Marquis de Sade Prize (Prix Sade), and was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Médicis and the literary prize of the Paris newspaper Le Monde. In Canada, Querelle of Roberval was a finalist for the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the 2019 Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal, and winner of both the 2019 Prix Ringuet of the Quebec Academy of Arts and Letters and the 2023 ReLit Award. In France, his most recent novel Que notre joie demeure was nominated for the 2023 Prix Goncourt, won the 2023 Prix Décembre, and won the Prix Médicis 2023. Kevin Lambert lives in Montreal. Biblioasis will be publishing the English translation of his next novel translated by Donald Winkler, May Our Joy Endure, in 2024.

ABOUT DONALD WINKLER

Donald Winkler is a translator of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-to-English translation. He lives in Montreal.