"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 …
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