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A solitary woman's interior journey of self-discovery.
A propos de l'auteur
Michèle Mailhot was born in 1932 in Montreal. She is the winner of the 1990 Governor General's Fiction Award for her novel
Le Passé Composé. She lives and works in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The translation of her novel
Death of the Spider (1991) was nominated for a Governor General's Award for Translation in 1992.
Neil B. Bishop is a French-to-English literary translator, poet, and educator based in St. John's, Newfoundland. A former professor at Memorial University, his work spans Québécois literature, translation studies, and creative writing. His translations include
Death of the Spider by Michèle Mailhot, shortlisted for the Governor General's Award, and multiple works by Robert Lalonde and Annick Perrot-Bishop. A recipient of the John Dryden Translation Prize, Bishop's poetry and fiction appear in both English and French across journals in Canada and Europe.
Résumé
“Neil Bishop has … revived this novel, Death of the Spider, in the true light of its prophecy (be it but dreamed), in the bright light too of its modernism, for this novel is both a poetic indictment of our contemporary society and a forerunner of the feminist novel—while admirably avoiding the traps of theory and rigidity. The author draws us into our very depths, our own submissiveness, our own hereditary sheep-like docility, she shuts us in with her main character, staring at the spider on the ceiling, in that secret bedroom of rebellion where this nameless heroine has withdrawn to think about her fate which is also ours and where she and we are left, alone with the shameful images of our own condition, our own, often willing, bondage.” – from the preface by Marie-Claire Blais
