Tremblay, Michel
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1942- ) Canadian playwright and author, much of whose work has been focused on the Québécois experience over the past half century, including several plays and other works analysing the secession drama at the centre of Canadian politics over these years; he has also focused on the life and politics of gay men over this period. Relatively little of his work could be easily described in terms of Fantastika, though his first novel, La Cité dans l'oeuf (1969; trans Michael Bullock as The City in the Egg 1999), is a vividly Equipoisal tale with an ostensibly fantasy narrative: triggered by the intermittent enabling appearances of the eponymous egg, governed by phases of the Moon, the protagonist travels to realms unknown, in particular the City at the heart of the action. At the same time, Near Future vistas of devastated Africa are described in sf terms, as is the Lost Race (which may be Secret Masters) who rule the inner regions of the city, the Dying Earth ambience generated by that city, and travel through Dimensions. Some of Tremblay's later work, much of it not translated, conveys a sense of immanent fantasy. Into the memoir that makes up the bulk of The Pallbearers Club (2022), the Vampire who obsesses the narrator interjects a "handwritten" commentary. [JC]
see also: Canada; Esther Rochon.
Michel Tremblay
born Montreal, Quebec: 25 June 1942
works
- Contes pour buveurs attardés (Montreal, Quebec: Les Éditions du Jour, 1966) [coll: pb/Fleury and Associates]
- Stories for Late Night Drinkers (Vancouver, British Columbia: Intermedia Press, 1977) [trans anon of the above: pb/]
- La Cité dans l'oeuf (Montreal, Quebec: Les Éditions du Jour, 1969) [pb/]
- The City in the Egg (Vancouver, British Columbia: Ronsdale Press, 1999) [trans by Michael Bullock of the above: pb/Lori-ann Latremouille]
- The Pallbearer's Club (New York: William Morrow, 2022) [hb/Mumtaz Mustafa]
links
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