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    ISBN: 9780889225206 | Paperback

    160 pages | Pub. Date: 20050315
    6.00 W × 9.00 H × 0.4 D inches
    Backlist | Fiction | Bisac: FIC019000
    Rights: WORLD

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In 1914, Simon Dulac enrolls in a Canadian contingent of military police, a perfect cover for his real ambition—to comb the battlefields of Europe unhindered in his search for the legendary Templar treasure said to have been buried in Flanders in 1307. An inveterate and uncannily lucky gambler, Dulac encounters Nell, who has come to the trenches to practice suturing wounds, forbidden to nurses in her native England.

So skilled is Nell at her craft that she knits together torn and broken flesh with elaborate and beautiful embroidery, creating a rebus code which both reveals and conceals the most intricate secrets of her charges.

Haunted by the iron jealousy of their commanding officer, Dulac and Nell pursue their desires and risk everything in the greatest game of all.

Masterful, transgressive and erudite, Desjardins’s second novel constructs a narrative tapestry woven of the most elusive threads of meaning and signification.

Short-listed 2005 Governor General's Literary Award

All That Glitters compels and disturbs, leaving us with questions about chance and fate, love and war.”
—Montreal Review of Books

By Martine Desjardins

Martine Desjardins was born in the Town of Mount Royal, Québec, in 1957. She worked as an assistant editor-in-chief at ELLE Québec magazine for four years before leaving to devote herself to writing. Her first novel, Le cercle de Clara, was published by Leméac in 1997, and was nominated for both the Prix littéraires du Québec and the Grand prix des lectrices de ELLE Québec in 1998. Desjardins currently lives in the Town of Mount Royal. In her free time, she paints miniature models of ruins overgrown with vegetation.

Read more about Martine Desjardins


Translated by Fred A. Reed

International journalist and award-winning literary translator Fred A. Reed is also a respected specialist on politics and religion in the Middle East. Reed is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for translation.

Read more about Fred A. Reed


Translated by David Homel

Award-winning author and literary translator David Homel also works as a journalist, editor and screenwriter.

Read more about David Homel


news | 2013-10-04
Celebrating Translators, the Too-Often Unsung Heroes of World Literature

…General’s Literary Award for Translation, and All That Glitters was a finalist for the 2005 Governor General’s …