“We are witnessing a real boom,” enthuses Anne-Isabelle Tremblay, head of the Quebec bookstore in Paris, with AFP.

Owned by the Canadian government, this bookstore has been promoting and distributing the literature of this French-speaking province of Canada for more than 25 years.

The fact remains that, from the memory of a librarian, the current craze is new: novels, essays, comic strips... The stalls of booksellers are overflowing with this literature, both so close to France by its language but also so distant by his North American imagination.

Last to have been talked about?

Comics author Julie Doucet, winner of the Angoulême Festival Grand Prix in mid-March, the most prestigious award in comics.

She is the first consecrated Canadian and Quebecer.

Canadian comic book author Julie Doucet poses on March 15, 2022 in Paris JOEL SAGET AFP / Archives

In the fall, another Quebecer had caused a stir: the novelist Kevin Lambert, finalist for the Prix Médicis with "You will like what you have killed" (Ed. Le Nouvel Attila).

"Contempt"

Not to mention the 2020 Renaudot essay prize, awarded to Dominique Fortier for "The paper towns", on the American poet Emily Dickinson.

A consecration for this literature, long shunned by French literary prizes.

Because if French-speaking authors from the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa are regularly praised - Tahar Ben Jelloun, Prix Goncourt 1987, Djaïli Amadou Amal, Goncourt des lycéens 2020, or Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Goncourt 2021... - it is far from be the case of Quebec literature.

"There has always been a bit of contempt for this literature and its language", assures AFP Lola Nicolle, editor at the young publishing house "Les Avrils".

With Sandrine Thévenet, they published two texts by Quebec feminist Martine Delvaux in early March: "Le Monde est à toi" and "Firefighters and pyromaniacs".

Moreover, continues Lola Nicolle, "for a long time we did not think of translating but of correcting" a language then deemed difficult to understand by the French readership.

"Today, things are changing because Quebec publishers are more and more assertive, dare to demand more. There is no longer any question for them of accepting that their language be annihilated".

"For us, it is important to affirm the legitimacy of the Quebec language. We are ready to adapt on a case-by-case basis, but it is important to participate in creating habit among the reader", adds Sébastien Dulude, Quebec publisher at La Mèche.

"Goldsmith's work"

His publishing house sold the rights to the book "Burgundy", a scathing autofiction by first-time author Mélanie Michaud about her childhood in a poor neighborhood of Montreal, to JC Lattès.

Released in early March in France, the book has been adapted to the margins.

The goal?

Let the Quebec language live.

His expressions like his words in English.

Only those that could cause confusion have been changed.

“It was a work of goldsmith”, underlines with AFP the editor Constance Trapenard.

"No question of translating or distorting, we worked hand in hand with Sébastien", the Quebec publisher.

Same tone or almost at the publishing house Stock which published at the beginning of January "Waterfowl", by Gabrielle Filteau-Chiba, this nature-loving author, who, like the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, left everything to live. in a cabin in the Quebec forest, as she tells in her first book "Encabanée".

“At no time did I say to myself that it was necessary to translate”, tells its editor Raphaëlle Liebaert to AFP.

Neither translation nor "francization", a simple glossary thought up by the author and the editor allows the reader, if he so wishes, to immerse himself in the singularity of the language at the end of his reading.

Each time, recalls Anne-Isabelle Tremblay, "it must be a common and joint work between the publishers and the author. After all, isn't this what we call respect for creative work?".

© 2022 AFP