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Forty-one sparkling classics of Quebec fiction

In these fantastic tall tales a bull turns into a lawyer, a lonely Alberta cow's ghost longs for Quebec, and Ulysses comes back to Ithaca Corner, Ontario. Jacques Ferron writes metaphysical fables, political satire, portraits of men and women in all walks of life, and wry comedies, with great originality and a profound sympathy for the human condition. These forty-one sparkling classics are among the most celebrated works in modern Quebec literature. They appear in this original New Canadian Library collection in a specially revised and expanded translation by Betty Bednarski.

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Translator’s Note
 
TALES FROM THE UNCERTAIN COUNTRY:
Back to Val-D’Or
Servitude
Cadieu
How the Old Man Died
Mélie and the Bull
Les Méchins
Tiresome Company
The Archangel of the Suburb
The Bridge
The Parrot
The Child
The Landscape Painter
The Provinces
La Mi-Carême
Summer Lethe
The Grey Dog
The Dead Cow in the Canyon
 
ENGLISH TALES:
Ulysses
The Sirens
The Buddhist
Animal Husbandry
The Woman Next Door
The Flood
The Parakeet
The Wedding Bouquet
Martine
Martine Continued
Armageddon
The Wool Nightshirt and the Horsehair Tunic
Little William
The Old Heathen
Back to Kentucky
The Sea-Lion
The Jailer’s Son
Black Cargo Ships of War
Little Red Riding Hood
The Pigeon and the Parakeet
The Rope and the Heifer
The Lady from Ferme-Neuve
 
OTHER STORIES:
Chronicle of Anse Saint-Roch
The Witch and the Barleycorn
 
Afterword

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Jacques Ferron was born in Louiseville, Quebec, in 1921.The eldest of five children (including his sisters Madeleine, the writer, and Marcelle, the painter), he took the greater part of the classics course at the Jesuit Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf in Montreal, then studied medicine at Laval University from 1941 until 1945. After a brief spell in the Canadian Army, he practiced as a country physician at Rivière-Madeleine in the Gaspé. In 1948 he returned to Montreal and set up his consulting office on the South Shore, where he lived until his death.

From the moment he returned to Montreal, Ferron began to lead a public life, contributing regularly to medical and literary journals and taking an active part in politics. In 1963 he founded his own party, the Rhinoceros Party, designed for the purpose of satirizing the federal political system.

Playwright and essayist, novelist and short story writer, Ferron remembers, especially in his tales, the multifaceted aspects of his cultural heritage. His tales invest the present with the vitality and richness of a strong Québécois past. His first collection won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 1962.

Jacques Ferron died in Saint-Lambert, Quebec, in 1985.


BETTY BEDNARSKI is a professor of French at Dalhousie University.

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