“CanLit marked a milestone this spring, but you could be forgiven if you missed it. In May, Vancouver-based Anvil Press published the last of Quebec writer Nelly Arcan’s books to be translated into English. (Arcan, who died at the age of 36 in 2009, published four novels in her lifetime;
Breakneck was her third.) A trenchant writer on sex, gender, and death, Arcan was a great provocateur of French letters. But celebrity itself is a difficult thing to translate. In English Canada, Nelly Arcan remains obscure and misunderstood. That’s a shame, because she’s one of the best writers this country has produced.”
—Jade Colbert, The Globe and Mail
