Lit in Translation

Vaudeville!

Music-Hall!

Gaétan Soucy (born 1958)

Translated by Sheila Fischman

English editions

In English

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New York at the end of the 1920s, among a demolition crew. A little girl killed by a collapsing staircase is buried, and fights break out between the demolishers and the people they evict. Xavier X. Mortanse says he is a newly arrived Hungarian immigrant; he remembers waking up one day on an American dock with chocolate in his pocket and his first name tattooed on his wrist. Utterly innocent and horrified by life, he returns each evening drunk with dust and humiliation to his room on the eighth floor, next to that of Miss Peggy Sue Ohara, who looks at him so gently. Somewhere underground lies a locked box holding a frog from a 1950s cartoon.

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About the book

Form
Novel
Length
390 pages in the original
Set in
United States, late 1920s
First published
2002 by Boréal
Author's age
44 when first published
ISBN

9782764601969 (original)

9780887846946 (House of Anansi Press, Canada)

9780887847189 (House of Anansi Press, Canada)

9780887847820 (House of Anansi Press, Canada)

More
Wikidata