QUERELLE OF ROBERVAL longlisted for the DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD!
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.
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
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.
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.
