Augustino and the Choir of Destruction

by Marie-Claire Blais

With Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, literary legend Marie-Clair Blais concludes her famed trilogy set on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. Written in her trademark style, which includes surreal surprises and idiosyncratic characters, this book presents a rich tapestry of humankind: Our Lady of the Bags, announcing the end of the world; Charles, a great poet cut down by AIDS; and Caroline, a transvestite Cinderella and artist. Most...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0887847528
• ISBN13: 9780887847523
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

"DARK, MAGICAL PROSE."

Governor General's Literary Award for Translation--2007 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nigel Spencer conveys the compelling spirit of Marie-Claire Blais' dizzying prose in this fictional microcosm of our disjointed times. His translation carries the reader along through the claustrophobic whirl and conflicting relations of a phantasmagoric world. . . . Nigel Spencer has performed a tour de force in Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, his translation of the third volume in Marie-Claire Blais' quartet. The poignant and intricate stories of the novel's astonishing constellation of characters are sensitively conveyed through his moving and innovative use of language. Spencer has risen to the extraordinary challenge of rendering Blais' uninterrupted stream of hallucinatory prose into an accomplished and lyrical translation. --The GGLA Jury-- (Three consecutive Governor General's Literary Awards for original or translation of first three novels in this quartet.) ========================================================================== The acceleration of our lives...deftly translated by Nigel Spencer. These people do exist. On the page, however, they take on surreal dimensions, the fragments of their lives woven together through Blais' dark, magical prose. --Pat Donnelly, The Montreal Gazette: 28/7/2007 ========================================================================== Blais' writing is...challenging but highly skilled stream of consciousness, the complexity of which only a seasoned writer could pull off... The stream of consciousness travels back and forth among a collection of characters, fictional and historical...it will circle back around to understanding. This repetition strengthens the stories. --Carla Lucchetta, The Globe and Mail: 28/7/2007 ========================================================================== ...Consolation comes and goes without lasting, but beauty lasts, and friendship, and love. Always in Marie-Claire Blais' work there comes the certainty that we are all connected, capable of everything, the deepest love, the worst crimes, the sublimest creations, great daring and self-sacrifice, simple joy. I know of no other novelist writing today who reflects so succinctly and with such real charity, what it's like to be human in this perturbed century. Nobody has orchestrated the passions and perplexities, the shared themes of life in quite such a way, one voice giving way to another, and another, the song continually passed on, taken up in another key. The writer herself is never glimpsed, but in her control and finesse she has all the skills of a great conductor. Readers who may be alarmed by being asked to read pages of prose with no pauses and little punctuation might be encouraged by reading it aloud, a process by which both the structure and the intense musicality of the writing may be fully enjoyed. This English translation from the orig