The Harmattan Winds

“A fresh little novel, teeming with life, of uncommon strength.” – Gilles Marcotte, L’actualité

An audacious and playful debut novel of adventure, brotherhood, and the search for a homeland — a contemporary classic of Quebecois literature

Written with uncommon wit, The Harmattan Winds is a feast of wordplay, rife with puns and wonder – perfect for devotees of Ali Smith, classic adventure novels like The Adventures of Huckleberry, and John Knowles’s A Separate Peace.

Hidden in the reeds floating on a pond next to the highway, a woman finds a baby bobbing in a shopping basket. Adopted by the Francoeurs, Hugues remains an outsider in his semi-family. At the same time, Habéké is adopted by a Canadian family and brought to Quebec after his own family dies of famine in Ethiopia. On the margins of their small town, the boys become sworn brothers, searching for their roots, desperate to return to exile, to a paradise called Ityopia.

Narrated by the bold and imaginative voice of Hugues, Sylvain Trudel’s prize-winning debut novel is at times serious and at times fantastical. In their child’s world, where Hugues and Habéké haven’t yet learned the prejudices of adults, they embark on adventures, digging holes to China and building fantastical contraptions to take them to far off places, like their hero, explorer Roald Amundsen.

Sylvain Trudel is a French-Canadian writer of adult fiction and more than a dozen children’s titles. He earned degrees in science and cinema and worked as a clown, a cucumber picker, and a commercial analyst, before turning to writing. His debut novel, Le Souffle de l’Harmattan (The Harmattan Winds), won both the Prix Molson and Prix Canada-Suisse. His work has been honored with the Prix Saint-Exupéry, Prix des libraires du Quebec, and Prix Christie, and in 2007 his novel Le Mer de la tranquilité won the Governor General’s Prize. He lives in Quebec.


Donald Winkler is a documentary filmmaker and literary translator. He graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1961. He has translated over forty works from French, including novels, nonfiction, and poetry and has won the Governor General’s Award for translation in 1994, 2011, and 2013. His translations include work by Pierre Nepveu, Samuel Archibald, and Kevin Lambert.