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The Town Below

Roger Lemelin author Michael Gnarowski editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Dundurn Group Ltd

Published:6th Jun '13

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The Town Below cover

The Town Below changed the face of Québécois literature.

The Town Below takes place in St. Joseph Parish of Quebec City’s Saint-Sauveur suburb. Saint-Sauveur is a parochial and provincial place where narrow piety and corruption can be found in every corner, and Denis and Lise, two adolescents in love, scandalize the town with their affair. Scheming politicians and clergymen and grasping social climbers mix with salt-of-the-earth citizens in a rough-and-tumble satiric assault on pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec mores and attitudes.

The Town Below won the Prix David and the Prix de la langue française. Lemelin was also awarded Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships. A bestseller in Quebec when it originally appeared, The Town Below has been called the "pioneer novel of working-class Quebec" and exploded, with great controversy, the smothering social and religious strictures prevalent among postwar Québécois. The novel was first published in English by Reynal & Hitchcock in 1948.

The historical aspects of The Town Below, along with Lemelin’s cast of characters, offers the new reader an enchanting way to learn about a Canada of long ago. -- Jennifer Hunter * Toronto Star *

ISBN: 9781554888030

Dimensions: 215mm x 139mm x 25mm

Weight: 418g

368 pages