The Annex

Anna is a secret service agent. When she’s not on a mission, Anna likes to return to Amsterdam, to the secret annex where Anne Frank and her family hid. Strangely this is the only place where Anna feels at home. During one such pilgrimage, the spy notices that someone is following her. After a harrowing chase through the city, the “organization” takes her to a safe house, whose location is kept from Anna, although clues reveal that she’s in Montreal. There, she meets Celestino, a great lover of literature. The eccentric man, host at the so-called Hotel Budapest, keeps careful watch over her and the eight other residents. Anna names them according to the literary heroes they most resemble: a couple of old Slavs look like characters straight out of Turgenev’s short stories, a nervous, boastful young man is named for Proust’s Charles Morel, an alley cat is called Moortje, after Anne Frank’s cat.

Catherine Mavrikakis was born in Chicago to a French mother and a Greek father who grew up in Algeria. She shared her childhood between Ville d'Anjou, Montréal-Nord, Villers-Bocage in Normandy and Bay City (Michigan). Since 2000, she has published four novels: Deuils cannibales et melancholiques (Trois, 2000), ça va aller (Léméac, 2002), Fleurs de crachat (Leméac, 2005), Le ciel de Bay City, (Héliotrope, 2008) and a play Omaha Beach (Héliotrope, 2008). She wrote a fictional essay on motherhood with Martine Delvaux: Ventriloquies (Leméac, 2003) and wrote an essay: Condemner à mort. Murders and the law on screen (PUM, 2005). She lives in Montreal.

Kathryn Gabinet-Kroo was born and raised in Oregon. She moved to Montreal (Canada) where she began her career as a professional artist. While painting and raising a family, she earned her Master’s in Translation Studies. She has worked for clients in the public and private sector but now focuses on literary translation. Her French-to-English translations of five novels and two short story collections by Quebec authors have been published.

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