Adventurous and cleverly assembled, Falling Shadows questions the meaning of community and revisits the thrilling excitement associated with the wilderness and survival classics like McCarthy’s The Road and King’s The Stand.
Falling Shadows
Talonbooks Editor
Translated by David Homel
In Falling Shadows, a lone man walks in the forest towards the hunting camp where his family has taken refuge to escape the upheaval caused by a widespread power failure. He knows he is threatened. One day, having lost his way, a twelve-year-old boy, mysteriously fearless and familiar, calls out to him. The unusual duo will have to face the hostility of the wilderness and thwart the offensive groups that now inhabit the woods.
This is Québec writer Christian Guay-Poliquin’s much anticipated third instalment in the series of gripping post-apocalyptic novels initiated with Running on Fumes and prolonged by the international bestseller The Weight of Snow, both translated by Governor General’s Award winner David Homel and published by Talonbooks in 2016 and 2019. The Weight of Snow was long-listed for the 2020 Sunburst Award and was translated into fifteen languages. Throughout these novels, Guay-Poliquin has developed a unique storytelling craft; his narratives are grounded in the demands and details of daily life and in a world ripe with experience.
THE WEIGHT OF SNOW
Talonbooks Editor
Translated by David Homel
A badly injured man. A nationwide power failure. A village buried in snow. A desperate struggle for survival. These are the ingredients of The Weight of Snow, Christian Guay-Poliquin’s riveting new novel. After surviving a major accident, the book’s protagonist is entrusted to Matthias, a taciturn old man who agrees to heal his wounds in exchange for supplies and a chance of escape. The two men become prisoners of the elements and of their own rough confrontation as the centimetres of snow accumulate relentlessly. Surrounded by a nature both hostile and sublime, their relationship oscillates between commiseration, mistrust, and mutual aid. Will they manage to hold out against external threats and intimate pitfalls?
"A claustrophobically tense novel of deceptive simplicity, its stark plot and captivating language cuts into readers like an icy wind."
Speculative Fiction in translation
"Running on Fumes is a Canadian legend processed as Canadian mythology"
Ronald Charles Epstein, PRAIRIEFIRE
RUNNING ON FUMES
Talonbooks Editor
Translated by Jacob Homel
In Running on Fumes, the debut novel by Christian Guay-Poliquin (translated into English by Jacob Homel), we follow an increasingly punch-drunk driver on a road trip across an apocalyptic version of Canada. At the outset of the narrative, the electricity inexplicably goes out nationwide, and gradually the mundanities of life shift to the rigours of survival. An unnamed mechanic jumps into his beat-up car and drives 4,736 kilometres east to reach his dying father. As the narrator’s journey becomes one of essentials – gasoline, water bottles, and gas-station food – and as the crisis around him begins to weigh more heavily, he seeks refuge with a woman, and later, a fellow traveler he meets on the road. But these two souls seem to seek a different sort of redemption …