The Double Feature of the Murdered Woman

It’s an ordinary summer in the twenty-first century. There’s a heat wave in Rome, where the poet has just set down her valises. What is she seeking amid the crowds of tourists, she, Italian-born, exiled to America, who speaks the language only haltingly? In the capital’s streets, at the railroad station or the museum, an exuberant city life rubs shoulders with a thousand tragedies. Rome is a theatre of recurrent violence, the cinema where you are seated, apprehensive, watching The Double Feature of the Murdered Woman. For six months the poet wanders the city, alert to the phantoms passing by. This book could be the written record of her conversations with ghosts. It’s a return to the crime scene, a renewal of vows, face to face with a haunting past: that of Italy, and the blood drenched story of women.

Donald Winkler was born in Winnipeg in 1940, graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1961, and as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar, did graduate study at the Yale School of Drama. From 1967 to 1995 he was a film director and writer at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal, and since the 1980s, a translator of Quebec literature: in 1994, 2011, and 2013 he won the Governor General’s Award for French to English translation, and has been a finalist for the prize on three other occasions.

Carole David was born in Montreal and earned a PhD in literary studies from the University of Sherbrooke. She has taught at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal and was head of the Public Lending Rights Program at the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2006, she was elected president of the Maison de la poésie de Montréal. David received the Prix Émile-Nelligan for Terroristes and in 1996 she was awarded the Terrasses Saint-Sulpice poetry prize by the magazine Estuaire for her poetry collection Abandons. Her novel Impala was a finalist for the Journal de Montréal prize and for the City of Montreal prize. La Maison d'Ophélie was on the shortlist for the Governor General's Award for French-language poetry in 1999. She received the Prix Alain-Grandbois in 2011 for her collection Manuel de poétique à l'intention des jeunes filles; the same collection was also included on the shortlist for the Governor General's poetry award. In 2020 se was named the recipient of Quebec's Prix Athanase-David for lifetime achievement in literature.

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