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
Governor General's (French) 2025 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Unearthed Women”
Katia Belkhodja · 39 when first published
Novel · 399 pages · Family, Migration, Historical
AI-generated summary:Rym spends her early childhood with her cousins in Algeria; exiled to Quebec after the civil war, they grow up in the shadow of four generations marked by colonization, resistance and uprooting.
Governor General's (French) 2025 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“A Silent Story”
Novel · 256 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:A young woman investigates the life of her grandmother Thérèse, a postwar suburban housewife who vanished more than half a century ago and whom the family never mentions.
Governor General's (French) 2025 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Silent Women”
Cristina Vanciu · 24 when first published
Novel · 133 pages · Migration, Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In a quiet suburb near Montreal, a Romanian family holds on to what is left of the old country; their fifteen-year-old daughter begins texting and seeing a young man, until she is assaulted and nobody wants to hear it.
Governor General's (French) 2025 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“I Put My Dreams on the Table”
Novel · 144 pages · Autofiction, Migration, Family
AI-generated summary:In four movements, a woman who writes weaves together reality and fiction, dreams and images of her inner life to explore motherhood, depression and precarity, and the myths of home and family.
Governor General's (French) 2025 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Plunder”
Patrice Lessard · 54 when first published
Novel · 257 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Sitting at the Scagliola wine bar in Naples, a group of friends invent a crime story inspired by an unsolved news item, while P., a writer adrift in the city, tries to understand how a story is made.
Governor General's (French) 2024 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Raw Milk”
Steve Poutré · 45 when first published
Novel · 264 pages · Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:A boy grows up on a Quebec dairy farm haunted by the dead, ghost stories, family secrets and chicks that die in the shell, and walks the line between the fields and the woods until he crosses it.
Governor General's (French) 2024 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Version Nobody Cares About”
Emmanuelle Pierrot · 29 when first published
Novel · 358 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:At eighteen, Sacha and her best friend Tom hitchhike from Montreal to Dawson City in the Yukon, where they find the community of punks and drifters they dreamed of, until Sacha falls for someone else.
Governor General's (French) 2024 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Count Is Right”
Novel · 261 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Adopted at five days old, a boy grows up obsessed with love and money, wondering whether he owes a debt to those who took him in, and compulsively tallies every loss and gain of his childhood.
Governor General's (French) 2024 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Grown-Ups”
Mathieu Rolland · 34 when first published
Novel · 216 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Sophie, a former star swimmer, sees a new life open up after a terrible accident; her husband Benoît, who forecasts disasters for a living, is shaken when a colleague vanishes; their gifted son Tom is lost among screens.
Governor General's (French) 2024 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Mute”
Pascale Beauregard · 42 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Catherine, the hearing daughter of two deaf parents, has to act as their interpreter from early childhood, caught between a mother denied speech and a grandmother who never stops talking.
Governor General's (French) 2023 · Winner
Marie Hélène Poitras · 48 when first published
Short stories · 192 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories of humans and animals giving themselves to one another and taking themselves back: a girl tries to tame an enormous dog, a man loves a woman through a horse, a radio host faces silence.
Governor General's (French) 2023 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Dark Is the Night”
Brigitte Haentjens · 71 when first published
Novel · 232 pages · Love, Politics
AI-generated summary:On holiday in Mexico, a woman watches the man beside her drink rum after rum and remembers the brilliant intellectual she once admired, the years after May 68, the hidden bottles and the bruises.
Governor General's (French) 2023 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Gold of the Larches”
Carole Labarre · 56 when first published
Novel · 130 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Pishimuss, an Innu elder, looks back on her life in her community: friendships and loves, the caribou hunt, the river and the forest, and the people who marked her.
Governor General's (French) 2023 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“My Son Came Back for Only Seven Days”
David Clerson · 45 when first published
Novel · 126 pages · Family, Nature
AI-generated summary:A woman who spends her summers alone in a cabin in Mauricie is visited by her son, missing for more than ten years, who tells her of his wandering life as they walk to a peat bog from his childhood.
Governor General's (French) 2023 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“A Postcard from the Ocean”
Stéfani Meunier · 52 when first published
Novel · 136 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:A woman raising two children alone finds a photo of her late father as a young man, surrounded by five strangers, and sets out to learn who they were.
Governor General's (French) 2022 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“A Thousand Secrets, a Thousand Dangers”
Alain Farah · 42 when first published
Novel · 512 pages · Family, Migration, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:On the day Alain marries Virginie in the crypt of Montreal's Saint Joseph's Oratory, surrounded by family who fled the wars of the Middle East, his body and mind start to fail him and a cursed name resurfaces.
Governor General's (French) 2022 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Radio Garden”
Charlotte Biron · 32 when first published
Novel · 136 pages · Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Convalescing in a bare room with a cardboard box, a cassette, a telephone and a radio, a young woman cut off from the world by illness finds company in the voices on the radio.
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) 2022 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Love's Final Tableau”
Larry Tremblay · 67 when first published
Novel · 216 pages · Love, Historical
AI-generated summary:Loosely based on the life of Francis Bacon, a painter addresses the young lover and model who first broke into his studio one night as a clumsy petty thief, and retraces their stormy relationship.
Governor General's (French) 2022 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Without Refuge”
Maryse Andraos · 33 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Coming of age, Love
AI-generated summary:From the suburb of her teenage years to the mountains of Iceland, by way of the student strikes, Naïma chases the light through her camera, unsure what a life of her own would look like.
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) 2021 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Black Metal”
Sébastien Chabot · 45 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:In the falsely peaceful village of Sainte-Florence in the Matapédia valley, the return of Sebastian Andersen, a silent young outsider just out of a youth centre, upsets the sordid balance that held the town together.
Governor General's (French) 2021 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“I've Shown All My White Paws, I Have None Left”
Sylvie Laliberté · 62 when first published
Novel · 198 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:In a long letter to her brother, who has just died, a woman tells of her grief and of their childhood in the suburbs, lived outside reality in the shadow of a father with a mental illness.
Governor General's (French) 2020 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Manhunt”
Sophie Létourneau · 40 when first published
Novel · 216 pages · Love, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:In 2008 a fortune teller tells a young Quebec writer that a book will lead her to the love of her life, but first she must move to Paris, fall for a little Frenchman and travel to Asia.
Governor General's (French) 2020 · Finalist
Jennifer Bélanger · 29 when first published
Novel · 138 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A young woman with chronic pain who faints in public places, with no medical explanation, tries to understand her illness, which keeps leading her back to a childhood alone with a mother who smoked all day in front of the TV.
Governor General's (French) 2020 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Autobiography of the Stranger”
Marie-Ève Lacasse · 38 when first published
Novel · 181 pages · Autofiction, Migration
AI-generated summary:Seventeen years after leaving Quebec for France, a writer asks herself why she has so often felt out of place, and explores her past through writing.
Governor General's (French) 2020 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Bitch”
Marie-Pier Lafontaine · 31 when first published
Novel · 112 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A daughter describes, precisely and without looking away, the family terror imposed by a sadistic, all-powerful father who beats her, keeps her on a leash and makes her eat under the table, while her mother never intervenes.
Governor General's (French) 2020 · Finalist
Naomi Fontaine · 32 when first published
Novel · 158 pages
AI-generated summary:An Innu writer from Uashat writes a long letter to Shuni, a Quebecer who has come to her community to help, telling her about her people, her family and what it means to be oneself after colonization.
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) 2019 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Wild Houses”
Novel · 326 pages · Autofiction, Coming of age, Migration
AI-generated summary:Macha, in her early thirties, tells the story of the places she has lived since childhood, from the big houses of Vineuil and Kinshasa to a flat in Brazzaville, a tiny one in Paris and a haunted house in Orléans.
Governor General's (French) 2019 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The She-Minotaur”
Novel · 170 pages · Autofiction, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:A woman terrified by the idea of living looks back on her childhood in short notes, most of them addressed to Maude, a friend who has died, to understand where her fears come from.
Governor General's (French) 2019 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Earth”
Sylvie Drapeau · 57 when first published
Novel · 102 pages · Family · Fleuve, book 4
AI-generated summary:One strange autumn, two sisters from a large family, the two artists of the clan, fall ill at once: the elder after a burst blood vessel in her brain, the narrator from utter exhaustion.
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
Title translated by AI:“Secondary Drownings”
Maxime Raymond Bock · 36 when first published
Short stories · 369 pages
AI-generated summary:Seven stories set in a Montreal full of fleeting traces of its past, among damaged families, false loves and friendships, artists measuring themselves against art and athletes betrayed by their bodies.
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) 2018 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Fictitious Names”
Olivier Sylvestre · 35 when first published
Short stories · 305 pages
AI-generated summary:After ten years at a respite centre for drug users in Montreal, with its shrill doorbell and bulletproof glass, a social worker tells of the lives marked by the street, drugs and abandonment that he has shared.
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
Title translated by AI:“The Palace of Fatigue”
Michael Delisle · 58 when first published
Short stories · 138 pages
AI-generated summary:Six stories about creation and storytelling: two suburban brothers adopt a bear with a severed paw, a young man enters literary circles guided by a mentor, a writer is shaken when a gifted photographer friend quits.
Governor General's (French) 2017 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Imperfect Friendship”
Mylène Bouchard · 39 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:Born on Île-aux-Coudres the night the schooner Amanda Transport burned, Amanda Pedneault, now married and a mother in Prague, decides to leave again, giving her daughter Sabina the story of her life.
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) 2017 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“117 North”
Virginie Blanchette-Doucet · 27 when first published
Novel · 164 pages
AI-generated summary:Maude has lost count of her trips between Val-d'Or and Montreal, the 529 kilometres she drives again and again at the wheel of the turquoise Tercel that Francis gave her.
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
Title translated by AI:“The Children of Liverpool”
Hugues Corriveau · 67 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Drawing on the 1993 murder of two-year-old James Bulger in Liverpool, the novel follows the two ten-year-old boys who abducted him from a shopping centre, tracing their lives up to that day.
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) 2015 · Finalist
Novel · 204 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:A boy from a frayed family finds comfort with an Italian neighbour who sews and knits for him; years later, in the bar of the Train Bleu restaurant, he confronts the damage done and his betrayal of Sèna.
Governor General's (French) 2015 · Finalist
Novel · 556 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In sixteenth-century Paris, young Blaise is forced to work for Gaspar De Vallon, a contemptuous and ambitious surgeon who exploits his talent to illustrate an anatomical treatise and pushes him into a hunt for corpses.
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 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“When the Wasps Fall Silent”
Stéphanie Pelletier · 32 when first published
Short stories · 117 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories of people rooted in their bodies and in the here and now, who love life wherever they find it, in people, nature or animals, and who are not spared trials, illness or the death of those they love.
Governor General's (French) 2013 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Second Train of the Night”
Gérald Tougas · 80 when first published
Novel · 258 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In 1969, the year man walked on the Moon, the self-taught, talkative Philippe has come back to Sainte-Luce to end his days near his nephew Marcel, and tells his own story and what happened one night long ago.
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) 2013 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Ilyich, Dead or Alive”
Roger Magini · 68 when first published
Novel · 137 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:In a hospital room, a talkative narrator keeps his dying friend Charlie Boy entertained by resurrecting Lenin, now ninety-eight, moth-eaten and rheumatic, to prepare him cheerfully for the great departure.
Governor General's (French) 2013 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Dead Ends”
Sergio Kokis · 69 when first published
Short stories · 247 pages
AI-generated summary:Fifteen stories, drawn from a former psychologist's long observation of human nature, about characters who reach a turning point in their lives.
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) 2012 · Finalist
Audrée Wilhelmy · 26 when first published
Novel · 80 pages
AI-generated summary:When old Grumme dies, the girl known as la Petite turns her back on the obese woman's general store and on her village to ring her bells as far as the circus at Fort-Bouteille, where, at the edge of a strange forest, she meets the big bad Wolf.
Governor General's (French) 2012 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Last Days of Smokey Nelson”
Catherine Mavrikakis · 50 when first published
Novel · 303 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:As the execution of Smokey Nelson nears at the Charlestown penitentiary, three people linked to his 1989 murders, a man once wrongly jailed for them, a survivor and a father whose child was killed, each face the date.
Governor General's (French) 2012 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Trout with Bare Hands”
Charles Bolduc · 31 when first published
Short stories · 139 pages
AI-generated summary:Thirty very short stories, small worlds that together make up a larger one, in which balance is often threatened and then restored.
Governor General's (French) 2012 · Finalist
Ryad Assani-Razaki · 30 when first published
Novel · 324 pages · Migration
AI-generated summary:In a big city in sub-Saharan Africa, little Toumani is sold by his father to a cruel master who leaves him for dead in a sewer; he is taken in by Iman, a mixed-race boy rejected by his mother, who dreams only of leaving for Europe.
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
Title translated by AI:“Passila the Postman”
Alain Beaulieu · 48 when first published
Novel · 185 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:Bored in the big city and hurt by the faithless Eliana, the postman Passila takes a vacant post in Ludovia, a provincial village at the foot of the Tipec volcano, where the hostile welcome soon draws him into a strange web.
Governor General's (French) 2011 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Hourglass of Solitudes”
Jean-Simon DesRochers · 35 when first published
Novel · 358 pages
AI-generated summary:One early January evening, a gust of snow on a provincial road causes a pile-up of about ten vehicles, and thirteen strangers, among them a soldier, a masseuse, a minister, a little girl and a trucker, wait in the freezing air.
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) 2011 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Grandmother”
Novel · 133 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Every Sunday, young Joseffa visits her eccentric grandmother, whom vascular dementia is carrying away, and accompanies her through her memories and confusions toward a shared release.
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
Title translated by AI:“Eleven Small Betrayals”
Agnès Gruda · 53 when first published
Short stories · 287 pages
AI-generated summary:Eleven stories built around a betrayal: a woman who will not call her brother to their dying mother's bedside, a teenager who drops a friend to fit into her new country, a mother who conceives a child without telling the father.
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 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Speech at the Idiot's Grave”
Julie Mazzieri · 33 when first published
Novel · 244 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Scandalized by the village idiot, the mayor of Chester and his deputy kidnap him one spring morning and throw him down a well; three days later the idiot starts shouting from the bottom of his pit.
Governor General's (French) 2009 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Pomegranate”
Aki Shimazaki · 54 when first published
Novel · 150 pages · Family, War, Historical · Au cœur du Yamato, book 2
AI-generated summary:Banzô Toda disappeared twenty-five years ago after being deported to a Siberian labour camp at the end of the war; his wife, who has Alzheimer's, still awaits him. Then their son Tsuyoshi discovers his father has been living nearby under another name.
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
Title translated by AI:“This Year My Youth Flies Away”
Jean-François Beauchemin · 49 when first published
Nonfiction · 122 pages · Autofiction, Family
AI-generated summary:The author reflects on the shock of his mother's death, mixing memories, the present and a calmer view of the future, in a book that is part essay, part journal and part autobiography.
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
Title translated by AI:“The Art of Fugue”
Guillaume Corbeil · 28 when first published
Short stories · 138 pages
AI-generated summary:Six stories framed by a prologue and an epilogue, told by two voices that tug at each other, about grotesque and complex characters caught in an absurd world they never think of questioning.
Governor General's (French) 2008 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“This Is My Body”
Jean-François Beauchemin · 48 when first published
Novel · 193 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Fifty years after the night of Golgotha, an old man who survived the cross keeps watch over his dying wife Martha, sister of Lazarus, and tells her how he turned away from God for a human love.
Governor General's (French) 2008 · Finalist
Jean-Pierre Trépanier · 55 when first published
Novel · 199 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Colomia, serving ten years for armed robbery, is visited by Inspector Levarois, who wants to know who bought a gun that once belonged to him and was used in the rape and murder of a child; naming the buyer could expose his old friends.
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 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Sea of Tranquility”
Sylvain Trudel · 43 when first published
Short stories · 185 pages
AI-generated summary:Nine stories, most told by men looking back on a childhood or adolescence marked by a drama: a boy traumatized by a cat set on fire, a homeless youth meeting an old man on a park bench, two teenage brothers who kill themselves.
Governor General's (French) 2007 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Constraint of the Unfinished”
Anthony Phelps · 78 when first published
Novel · 204 pages · Migration, Politics
AI-generated summary:After a quarter of a century in exile, a Haitian sculptor and writer returns to his native country, still suffering from the Duvalier dictatorship, and comes to see that the Haiti he carried existed only in his mind.
Governor General's (French) 2007 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Rest of the Time”
Esther Croft · 62 when first published
Short stories · 104 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories of people caught at the moment they face illness, grief or loss: a mother with cancer, a slightly disabled teenager who wants to die, a father worn down by his delinquent son, divorced parents at their son's bedside.
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) 2007 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Endangered Species”
Robert Lalonde · 60 when first published
Short stories · 196 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories that bring hidden lives to the surface: a father who vanishes into a river before his son is born, a fallen angel who sets young travellers alight, a woman who gives a painter the strength to create.
Governor General's (French) 2006 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Wolf River”
Andrée Laberge · 53 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Many voices bear witness to the bond between a father who is half man, half wolf and his son, and to the lives around them, among them a stammering girl with a cruel mother and a braggart starved of his parents' love.
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) 2006 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Savages”
Louis Hamelin · 47 when first published
Short stories · 289 pages
AI-generated summary:Ten stories about Cree men and writers, poets dying of desire, brush cutters who have seen the bear and a computer specialist caught in a crossfire, all solitary and torn between the nostalgia of a free life and the need for tenderness.
Governor General's (French) 2006 · Finalist
Michael Delisle · 46 when first published
Short stories · 120 pages
AI-generated summary:Seven stories about people imprisoned in themselves and carrying wounds that never healed, set between reality and premonition, in which grief turns out to be what shapes a life.
Governor General's (French) 2006 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The City of Winds”
Pierre Yergeau · 48 when first published
Novel · 139 pages · Migration · Abitibi cycle, book 3
AI-generated summary:The eldest son of the Hanse family leaves Abitibi in search of a future and a fortune, heading for Michigan and Chicago, the city of gangsters, bootleggers and dice players.
Governor General's (French) 2005 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Firefly”
Aki Shimazaki · 50 when first published
Novel · 137 pages · War, Family · Le poids des secrets, book 5
AI-generated summary:Tsubaki, an archaeology student, adores her grandmother Mariko, now a widow whose days are numbered after a concussion; through the old woman's confused words emerges a story of abused innocence from her youth, in the time of Hiroshima.
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
Guy Lalancette · 56 when first published
Novel · 244 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:In the village of Saint-Blaise in the 1960s, a Quebec Romeo and Juliet story unfolds around a heroine raped, beaten and humiliated by her own family, amid terrible family secrets.
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) 2004 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“You Must Be Happy”
Katerine Caron · 37 when first published
Novel · 290 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:A young woman lives with her child and her often absent husband in an old house among fruit trees by a river; she has everything she needs to be happy, yet beneath the calm of her uneventful days something violent is moving.
Governor General's (French) 2004 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Parallels”
Marguerite Andersen · 80 when first published
Novel · 263 pages · Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Two women of the same generation lead parallel lives: one, a city-dwelling European, chooses simplicity and rejects convention; the other, a Quebec villager, lives confined and repressed. Writing and friendship bring them together.
Governor General's (French) 2004 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Lovers of the Alfama”
Sergio Kokis · 59 when first published
Novel · 208 pages · Love, Politics
AI-generated summary:On the Day of the Dead in Lisbon, Joaquim, a young mathematician grieving his lost Mathilde, ends up at a restaurant where a strange gathering of men remembers the departed, and old Martim tells the story of his one thwarted love.
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
Title translated by AI:“The Blind Spot”
Jean-François Chassay · 43 when first published
Novel · 326 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On 19 January 2001, three members of one family, Stéphane, Camille and Dominique, talk: one on the phone, one to a listener, one to himself, about architecture, cooking, neurology, history, childhood and the dead.
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) 2003 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Console Me”
Novel · 318 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In spring 1944 Lazare Lefort, a grieving widower and fisherman from Chéticamp, Nova Scotia, flees by night with his young son Gabriel. In 1963 Gabriel travels back to that lost landscape, and a meeting there leads him astray.
Governor General's (French) 2002 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Glory of Cassiodorus”
Monique LaRue · 54 when first published
Novel · 296 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:In his last year of teaching in the French department of a Quebec cegep, a literature teacher gains sudden media fame for a few sharply worded opinion columns.
Governor General's (French) 2002 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Intimate”
Guy Demers · 38 when first published
Novel · 202 pages
Governor General's (French) 2002 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Mind Elsewhere”
Hélène Vachon · 55 when first published
Novel · 235 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:A portrait painter who enjoys her wine keeps looking for meaning in her life, caught in a romantic rivalry and grieving two people who shared her bohemian life.
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) 2002 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Desertion”
Pierre Yergeau · 44 when first published
Novel · 199 pages · Family · Abitibi cycle, book 2
AI-generated summary:Mie, the youngest child of a trapeze artist and a singer from a circus stranded in Abitibi in 1933, is now an old woman whose husband has just died, and she sheds no tears; her few memories go back to a childhood in a logging camp.
Governor General's (French) 2001 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Rapture”
Andrée A. Michaud · 44 when first published
Novel · 213 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:A woman rents a quiet house in a sunny village; during a sudden summer storm a little girl disappears, and the earthen cellar beneath the house seems to keep the memory of the missing child.
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) 2001 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Ocean Lane”
Rachel Leclerc · 46 when first published
Novel · 168 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A father and his daughter live among Montreal's forgotten people, each trying in their own way to break free despite the troubled past that binds them.
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.
Governor General's (French) 2000 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Garden and Prairie”
Novel · 250 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:When her grandmother dies, a young woman mourns her own childhood, moving between Montreal and Regina in Saskatchewan, in a story about linguistic and cultural exile.
Governor General's (French) 2000 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Man of Silences”
Christiane Duchesne · 50 when first published
Novel · 124 pages · Coming of age, Family
AI-generated summary:Marie, her aunt Pauline and Michel Collet, a boy who belongs to no one, live with their sick dog in a house in the forest near the sea; then Michel goes missing, and a silent presence watches over them.
Governor General's (French) 2000 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Once Upon a Time There Was a City”
Pierre Samson · 41 when first published
Novel · 297 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:Twenty-five years after fleeing Ouro Preto, where he had come too close to a left-wing group, the journalist Roberto do Nascimento returns to his Brazilian hometown and has to face what happened there.
Governor General's (French) 2000 · Finalist
Roger Magini · 55 when first published
Novel · 91 pages · War
AI-generated summary:Lambert, a veteran of the Indochina war, lives in Sainte-Luce-sur-Mer on the St. Lawrence. Walking the shore with Coré, he finds the battered body of a sailor from a transatlantic race, still alive, and takes him home.