Songs for the Cold of Heart

Nuns that appear out of thin air, a dinner party at the Goebbels’, Quebec’s very own Margaret Thatcher, a grandma that just won’t die (not until the archangel comes back)...Songs For The Cold Of Heart is a yarn to rival the best of them, a big fat whopper of a tall tale that bounces around from provincial Rivière-du-Loup in 1919 to Nagasaki, 1990s Berlin, Rome, and beyond. This is the novel of a century—long and glorious, stuffed full of parallels, repeating motifs, and unforgettable characters—with the passion and plotting of a modern-day Tosca.

Eric Dupont lives and works in Montreal. He is a past winner of Radio-Canada’s “Combat des livres” (the equivalent of the CBC’s Canada Reads contest), a finalist for the Prix littéraire France-Québec and the Prix des cinq continents, and a winner of the Prix des libraires and the Prix littéraire des collégiens. His fourth novel, La fiancée américaine, has sold over 60,000 copies in Quebec alone. Originally from Ireland, Peter McCambridge runs the Québec Reads website and the QC Fiction imprint. Life in the Court of Matane (also by Eric Dupont) was the first novel he chose for this collection and the book that made him want to become a literary translator in the first place. His translation of its first chapter won the 2012 John Dryden Translation Prize. Songs For The Cold Of Heart is his tenth book in translation.