Every year, France, Japan, Brazil and more crown their best book. Spin the globe to see which ones you can read in English, and which are still waiting.
4,667 books · 44 prizes · 39 countries
Showing 49 of 129 books. 80 aren’t in English yet: show all.
Governor General's (French) 2022 · Finalist
Les ombres blanches
Dominique Fortier · 50 when first published
Novel · 248 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:When Emily Dickinson dies in 1886, her sister Lavinia finds hundreds of poems scribbled on scraps of paper and entrusts their publication to Mabel Loomis Todd, their brother's mistress.
Governor General's (French) 2021 · Winner
Faire les sucres
Fanny Britt · 43 when first published
Novel · 228 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:Adam and Marion, a successful Montreal couple at the heart of the city's foodie and entertainment world, see their marriage slowly come apart as their lives become tangled with that of Celia, a young woman from Martha's Vineyard.
Governor General's (French) 2021 · Finalist
Rien du tout
Olivia Tapiero · 31 when first published
Novel · 136 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:In fragments that refuse character, plot and genre, a voice confronts a black hole of collapse, where generations, journeys and desires mix, and turns against institutions, nations and the state of the world.
Governor General's (French) 2021 · Finalist
Tout est ori
Paul Serge Forest · 37 when first published
Novel · 450 pages · Speculative, Crime
AI-generated summary:In Baie-Trinité on Quebec's North Shore, where the Lelarge family's huge plant controls the seafood market, an elegant visitor tied to a mysterious Japanese conglomerate turns up on the beach.
Governor General's (French) 2019 · Winner
Le drap blanc
Céline Huyghebaert · 41 when first published
Novel · 259 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:When her father dies, his ashes are scattered on the water and his belongings given away or destroyed, so his daughter sets out to piece together who this funny, angry, hard-drinking man was.
Governor General's (French) 2019 · Finalist
Mina parmi les ombres
Edem Awumey · 43 when first published
Novel · 160 pages · Love, Politics
AI-generated summary:Kerim Neto returns to his native city on the Atlantic coast of Africa, a place of scorching sun and self-appointed preachers, to look for Mina, his former model, lover and muse, who has disappeared.
Governor General's (French) 2018 · Winner
De synthèse
Karoline Georges · 47 when first published
Novel · 207 pages · Family, Speculative
AI-generated summary:A woman who wants to pass through the screen and become an image through her digital avatar returns to her family's suburban house as her mother enters the final phase of a long decline.
Governor General's (French) 2018 · Finalist
La bête creuse
Christophe Bernard · 35 when first published
Novel · 600 pages · Family, Satire
AI-generated summary:In La Frayère, on the Gaspé coast between the mountains and the sea, a disputed goal in a hockey game sets off a feud that spans a hundred years and two brothers who hate each other.
Governor General's (French) 2018 · Finalist
Manikanetish
Naomi Fontaine · 30 when first published
Novel · 168 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Yammie, a young Innu woman, returns to Uashat on Quebec's North Shore to teach French at the Manikanetish school, and to find her roots, among students struggling to take charge of their lives.
Governor General's (French) 2017 · Winner
Le poids de la neige
Christian Guay-Poliquin · 34 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:In a drafty veranda outside a village without electricity, old Matthias looks after an injured young man through the winter, in exchange for firewood, food and a place in the convoy leaving for the city in spring.
Governor General's (French) 2017 · Finalist
Le plongeur
Stéphane Larue · 33 when first published
Novel · 464 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In Montreal in the winter of 2002, a graphic design student not yet twenty, broke and hooked on video lottery machines, takes a job as a dishwasher in a busy Italian restaurant.
Governor General's (French) 2016 · Winner
Au péril de la mer
Dominique Fortier · 43 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:In the fifteenth century a painter haunted by the memory of the woman he loved takes refuge in the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel; five hundred years later a novelist in search of the land of books finds him there.
Governor General's (French) 2016 · Finalist
La femme qui fuit
Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette · 36 when first published
Novel · 378 pages · Family, Historical, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A writer who never knew her mother's mother, Suzanne, who stood with the Refus global painters in 1948 and then abandoned her two children, hires a private detective to retrace her grandmother's life.
Governor General's (French) 2016 · Finalist
L’année la plus longue
Daniel Grenier · 35 when first published
Novel · 384 pages · Historical, Speculative, Family
AI-generated summary:Albert Langlois tells his son Thomas, born on 29 February, that to keep the world in balance he cannot exist every year; then Albert disappears north with his secret and his notebooks.
Governor General's (French) 2016 · Finalist
Blanc dehors
Martine Delvaux · 47 when first published
Novel · 185 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A young woman becomes pregnant, a man runs away, and the little girl born in 1968 grows up with a riddle: who was the stranger who refused to be her father?
Governor General's (French) 2015 · Winner
Six degrés de liberté
Nicolas Dickner · 43 when first published
Novel · 392 pages
AI-generated summary:A young woman who wants to push the limits of human experience, a hacker optimizing the world's flow of bananas and cushions, and a police employee who wants to be done with geography are drawn into a planet-wide game.
Governor General's (French) 2015 · Finalist
Traité des peaux
Catherine Harton · 32 when first published
Short stories · 117 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:Stories from northern forests and coasts: a jeweller makes jewellery from bird feathers, a man corresponds with whoever threw a message in a bottle into the sea, another waits for the storm to break so he can drink it.
Governor General's (French) 2015 · Finalist
À la recherche de New Babylon
Dominique Scali · 31 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In the American West of the 1800s, Reverend Aaron, Charles Teasdale, Russian Bill and Pearl Guthrie roam the desert in pursuit of New Babylon, an imaginary city where duels are allowed and lawmen banned.
Governor General's (French) 2014 · Winner
Bondrée
Andrée A. Michaud · 57 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Summer 1967 at Boundary Pond, a border lake renamed by a long-dead trapper: teenage girls hula-hoop on the sand and children run on the beach, until the trapper's old traps resurface and Zaza Mulligan disappears.
Governor General's (French) 2014 · Finalist
Pourquoi Bologne
Alain Farah · 34 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Speculative, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A writer split between McGill University in 1962 and in 2012 investigates the psychiatrist who conducted deprogramming experiments on patients on campus, experiments his uncle Nab Safi knew about.
Governor General's (French) 2014 · Finalist
L’orangeraie
Larry Tremblay · 59 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · War, Family
AI-generated summary:Twin brothers Amed and Aziz could have grown up peacefully in the shade of the orange trees, until a shell kills their grandparents and men come to demand that one of the boys avenge the blood spilled.
Governor General's (French) 2014 · Finalist
Le Feu de mon père
Michael Delisle · 55 when first published
Novel · 106 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A poet remembers his father, a bandit turned charismatic Christian, a violent man who came to speak of nothing but Jesus, whom the son hated and could not help loving.
Governor General's (French) 2014 · Finalist
C’est le cœur qui meurt en dernier
Robert Lalonde · 66 when first published
Novel · 115 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Waking from a dream in which his dead mother spoke to him in an unknown tongue, a son addresses her, a woman trapped by fate who keeps up a relationship of tenderness and battle with him from beyond the grave.
Governor General's (French) 2013 · Finalist
Hollywood
Marc Séguin · 42 when first published
Novel · 173 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Days before giving birth, Branka, a survivor of the Sarajevo snipers, is killed by a stray bullet; her grieving partner drinks himself into a Brooklyn back alley, where two kind outcasts take him in.
Governor General's (French) 2012 · Winner
Pour sûr
France Daigle · 58 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In Moncton, Terry and Carmen, their children Étienne and Marianne and the regulars of the bar Le Babar go about their daily lives while wondering about their place in the world, in a novel of fragments about Acadia and the Chiac language.
Governor General's (French) 2011 · Winner
L'homme blanc
Perrine Leblanc · 30 when first published
Novel · 213 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:Kolia, born in a labour camp in the mountains of eastern Siberia and raised in Stalin's prisons, is taken under the wing of Iossif, a prisoner from Western Europe; released in his late teens, he joins a Moscow circus and becomes a mute clown.
Governor General's (French) 2011 · Finalist
Polynie
Mélanie Vincelette · 36 when first published
Novel · 168 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Rosaire Nicolet, a respected young international lawyer, is found dead in an Iqaluit hotel room rented by a stripper; his younger brother Ambroise sets out to find his killer and uncovers the secrets of his life.
Governor General's (French) 2010 · Winner
Ru
Kim Thúy · 41 when first published
Novel · 141 pages · Migration, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A Vietnamese woman who fled by boat as a child looks back on her life, from Saigon to a refugee camp and to Granby, Quebec, in brief episodes that move between the tragic and the comic.
Governor General's (French) 2010 · Finalist
L'énigme du retour
Dany Laferrière · 56 when first published
Novel · 227 pages · Autofiction, Migration, Family
AI-generated summary:Thirty-three years after fleeing Haiti for Montreal, a writer learns in the middle of the night that his father, whom he barely knew, has died in exile in New York, and sets out to bring his spirit back to his native village.
Governor General's (French) 2010 · Finalist
Mai au bal des prédateurs
Marie-Claire Blais · 71 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Soifs, book 5
AI-generated summary:Every night at the Saloon, a troupe of young men transform themselves into dream creatures in colourful gowns and wigs, singing and dancing for the excluded and rejected; among them Yinn, and around them a sheltered girl named Mai.
Governor General's (French) 2010 · Finalist
Maleficium
Martine Desjardins · 52 when first published
Novel · 160 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Seven men and a woman confess to Father Savoie, a priest in late nineteenth-century Quebec, strange events from their travels in the Orient; unable to keep silent, he commits the sacrilege of writing their confessions down.
Governor General's (French) 2009 · Finalist
Du bon usage des étoiles
Dominique Fortier · 36 when first published
Novel · 344 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1845 two ships under Sir John Franklin set out to conquer the Northwest Passage; aboard the Terror, Captain Francis Crozier keeps a journal, while in England Franklin's wife, Lady Jane, leads a busy social life.
Governor General's (French) 2009 · Finalist
Êtes-vous mariée à un psychopathe?
Nadine Bismuth · 34 when first published
Short stories · 222 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Ten stories of contemporary women, single, unfaithful or in love, facing men who make them dream, let them down or keep them dependent, and wondering whether there is anything worse than married life, unless it is being single.
Governor General's (French) 2008 · Winner
Naissance de Rebecca à l'ère des tourments
Marie-Claire Blais · 69 when first published
Novel · 216 pages · Politics · Soifs, book 4
AI-generated summary:In the American South, the characters of the Soifs cycle return in a vast chorus of interior voices, and this time the fight between good and evil plays out inside each of them, as a birth brings the fate of the world into play again.
Governor General's (French) 2008 · Finalist
Champagne
Monique Proulx · 56 when first published
Novel · 318 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:Around a mythical lake in an untouched forest, Lila Szach, who owns nearly all the land, defends it fiercely against predators, while Claire, Simon, little Jérémie and others take refuge in its beauty.
Governor General's (French) 2007 · Finalist
Mercredi soir au Bout du monde
Hélène Rioux · 58 when first published
Novel · 250 pages
AI-generated summary:Le Bout du monde is a modest Montreal diner open around the clock, where loners, misfits and passers-by meet; the novel follows its regulars as far as Vancouver, Mexico City, Florida and the Dominican Republic.
Governor General's (French) 2006 · Finalist
Jeanne sur les routes
Jocelyne Saucier · 58 when first published
Novel · 160 pages · Politics, Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:In Rouyn in 1932 a young journalist working for the mine owners' paper hears the Marxist Jeanne Corbin urge the miners to strike, and from then on nothing is the same for him, his wife or their three daughters.
Governor General's (French) 2005 · Finalist
Après la nuit rouge
Christiane Frenette · 51 when first published
Novel · 161 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In 1955 fragile Thomas comes home to Rimouski after five years in a psychiatric hospital and forms a strange bond with his childhood friend, now a doctor, and his wife. In 2002 their daughter returns after a thirty-year flight.
Governor General's (French) 2005 · Finalist
Augustino et le chœur de la destruction
Marie-Claire Blais · 66 when first published
Novel · 232 pages · Politics · Soifs, book 3
AI-generated summary:On an island in the Gulf of Mexico, a crowd of characters, rich and poor, artists and petty criminals, cross paths, among them Augustino, a boy writer who senses the forces of destruction at the heart of his daily life.
Governor General's (French) 2005 · Finalist
Nikolski
Nicolas Dickner · 33 when first published
Novel · 290 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Around the age of twenty, Noah, Joyce and an unnamed narrator leave their birthplaces and land in Montreal, each believing they are alone, while their paths keep crossing in ways that hint at a hidden symmetry.
Governor General's (French) 2004 · Winner
Le cercle parfait
Pascale Quiviger · 34 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Passing through Italy, Marianne meets a man who will overturn her life: loving him means waiting for him in the knowledge that he will come in his own time, and breaking with her life and her partner back home.
Governor General's (French) 2004 · Finalist
Ce pays qui est le mien
Didier Leclair · 36 when first published
Novel · 198 pages · Migration
AI-generated summary:In snowbound Toronto, Apollinaire Mavoungou, an African doctor who has become a Canadian citizen but cannot have his diplomas recognized, goes through an identity crisis that reaches every part of his life.
Governor General's (French) 2003 · Winner
La maison étrangère
Élise Turcotte · 45 when first published
Novel · 243 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:After a breakup, Élisabeth, a medievalist who has buried herself in the past, sets out on a search through her own body and the symbols of the Middle Ages to find out whether love can teach her who she is.
Governor General's (French) 2003 · Finalist
Music-Hall!
Gaétan Soucy · 44 when first published
Novel · 440 pages
AI-generated summary:In late-1920s New York, Xavier X. Mortanse, who believes he is a newly arrived Hungarian immigrant, works on a demolition crew and comes home each night, covered in dust and humiliation, to a tiny room next to the gentle Peggy Sue Ohara.
Governor General's (French) 2003 · Finalist
Le Mangeur de bicyclette
Larry Tremblay · 48 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Love, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Ten years after failing the test set by Anna, the actress he has loved since adolescence, of eating his bicycle to win her, the young photographer Christophe Langelier is thrown out by her and flees to Mexico to get over her.
Governor General's (French) 2002 · Finalist
Le cœur est un muscle involontaire
Monique Proulx · 50 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Florence dislikes writers and their books, but she loves Zéno, who worships a reclusive novelist. When she finds that this novelist has stolen the most precious sentence anyone ever said to her, she sets out to track him down.
Governor General's (French) 2001 · Finalist
Dans la foudre et la lumière
Marie-Claire Blais · 62 when first published
Novel · 188 pages · Politics · Soifs, book 2
AI-generated summary:In 1999, on a small island in the American South resembling Key West, a hundred or so people, from a young pilot pushed by her parents to a homeless visionary roaming Manhattan, live their lives in one long stream of voices.
Governor General's (French) 2001 · Finalist
L'autre
Pan Bouyoucas · 55 when first published
Novel · 231 pages · War
AI-generated summary:On the Greek island of Leros in 1943, sixteen-year-old Thomas, who dreams of going to sea, loses a leg to a stray shell. Years later, mending nets, he sees a sailboat arrive carrying a double who bears his name.
Governor General's (French) 2000 · Winner
Un vent se lève qui éparpille
Jean Marc Dalpé · 42 when first published
Novel · 160 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In a small northern Ontario mill town, three people who knew and loved a woman named Marie each tell part of her story, a drama of passion, desire, betrayal and abandonment that comes to light only slowly.