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Must-read books by French-Canadian writers
Since long before Canada’s founding, French-Canadian writers have grappled with questions of identity, language, culture, and survival. From tales of hardship and resilience to sharp social critiques, to celebrations of heritage, these stories offer a windows into a diverse set of French-Canadian worlds.
Encompassing the literature of the Québécois, the Acadians of Atlantic Canada, and other pockets of French-speaking communities throughout Canada, French-Canadian writing exists across a vibrant, complex, and often surprisingly rebellious literary landscape—and is made accessible to English readers through the work of skilled translators.
Em
In this gorgeous, meditative, and piercing novel, Kim Thúy explores the reverberations of the Vietnam War in complicated ways. It follows two children born and orphaned during the war whose lives take very different trajectories. Through the POVs of these two characters and the various people connected to their lives, Thúy tells a remarkably rich story that spans continents and generations. Beautifully written, it's about exile and diaspora, home and belonging, and the ways people find to take care of each other, even during impossible times.
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Kamouraska
A classic of French Canadian literature, Kamouraska is full of the kind of eighteenth century drama that still entertains today. Set in rural Quebec, it centers around Elisabeth d'Aulnières and her messy love life: her marriage, her husband's murder, and her passionate and sometimes destructive love with an American doctor. First published in 1970, this historical novel evokes a Canada that no longer exists, but does so through the eyes of a woman whose struggles and desires will resonate with modern readers.
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The Rage Letters
These short stories paint an intimate portrait of ordinary life for a group of intertwined Black queer and trans characters in Montreal and beyond. Bah writes about everyday occurrences with little drama but a lot of heart. Characters fall in and out love, struggle through difficult situations at work and at home, navigate the ways systemic violence shows up in their lives, celebrate, get in fights, and search for meaning. Many characters reappear from story to story, which gives the collection a satisfying novelistic quality.
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The Goddess of Fireflies
Often hailed as the classic Québécois coming-of-age story of the 1990s, this vibrant, raucous novel follows 14-year-old Catherine during the tumultuous and life-changing year of 1996. Catherine longs for more adventure than her small town is readily willing to provide, and so, with her parents preoccupied with a messy divorce, she falls into a fast, bright life of punk rock and drugs. Pettersen vividly captures the heady rush of teenage angst and yearning, the excitement of rebellion, and the pain and confusion of a girl spiraling out of control.
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Just Fine
Set in the small Acadian town of Dieppe, this short, genre-blending novel explores themes of place, community, cultural norms, and spirituality. An agoraphobic woman remains inside her house but lives a rich inner life. As her dreams gradually become bigger, so do those of her friends and neighbors, and soon the whole town experiences a kind of psychological awakening. Suddenly everyone's reaching for something beyond the borders of their quiet, country life, and their intertwined journeys will change Dieppe forever.
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How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired
This tense and arresting novel immediately became a cult classic when it was first published in 1985 and remains so to this day. Reminiscent of the gritty stream-of consciousness of American writers like Jack Kerouac, the story centers around a young man as he wanders through the streets of Montreal, thinking, observing, hooking up with women, and, most poignantly—writing a book that he hopes will save his life. Full of sharp social commentary and unforgettable characters, this novel remains as relevant as ever.
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Dandelion Daughter
This sensitive and affecting novel follows a trans woman from her remote, isolated childhood in the countryside north of Montreal, through her tumultuous teen years of self-discovery, and into her young adulthood, as she finally comes into her trans identity. With quiet, deliberate prose, an eye for detail, and, most of all, complex and layered character work that reveals the narrator in all her messy humanity, Boulianne-Tremblay has written a modern queer classic.
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These Festive Nights
These Festive Nights, the first installment in Marie-Claire Blais's now-classic novel cycle, won the Governor General’s Award for French Fiction and has been beloved by readers since it first appeared. Set over three days on an island in the Gulf of Mexico, it centers on Renata, a woman who is convalescing—and pondering where her life will lead her next. As she and a group of other characters gather to celebrate the end of the 20th century, they all confront their pasts, their futures, and the charged space between the ending of an old world and the ushering in of a new one.
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