ISBN:
9780889228429
Pages: 144 pp
Pub. Date:
April 15 2014
Dimensions: 8.5" x 5" x 0.4375"
Rights: Available: WORLD
Categories
Fiction / FIC019000
- FICTION / Literary
Edgar, a timid, asocial thirty-something, witnesses the brutal rape of a young woman and subsequently bears the unconscious victim home. Haunted by the death of his overbearing mother, he pledges to act as the mysterious woman’s saviour. Gothic and darkly humorous, The Obese Christ explores the nebulous divide between Good and Evil, while demonstrating a powerful mastery of suspense.
"And though he talks to people, there’s not a single dialogue exchange in the entire book. This dehumanizing device depicts the way Edgar uses others solely to enact his mutating justifications as he moves from rescue to kidnapping to murder to exorcism – it’s dreadful, but incredibly effective as a technique. There are not many books that make this reader’s flesh crawl, but The Obese Christ is undoubtedly one of them."
– Montreal Review of Books
“This disturbing novel slowly and ingeniously unfolds, revealing an ever-darkening scenario. … Suspense is cleverly built up, understanding subtly created. … an intense and gripping journey enhanced by Tremblay’s lyrical, evocative language, his effective narrative technique, and his meticulous attention to the everyday, often unappetizing, details of housework, clothing, bodies.”
– Event magazine
“This cinematographic novel advances with machinelike precision worthy of Hitchcock.”
– Le Soleil
“Larry Tremblay has concocted an amazing psycho-religious thriller.”
– Voir
By Larry Tremblay
Larry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor and specialist in Kathakali, an elaborate dance theatre form which he has studied on numerous trips to India. He has published twenty books as a playwright, poet, novelist and essayist, and is one of Quebec’s most-produced and translated playwrights (his plays have been translated into twelve languages).
Translated by Sheila Fischman
Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Sheila Fischman was raised in Ontario and is a graduate of the University of Toronto. She is a founding member of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and has also been a columnist for the Globe and Mail and Montreal Gazette, a broadcaster with CBC Radio, and literary editor of the Montreal Star. She now devotes herself full time to literary translation, specializing in contemporary Quebec fiction, and has translated more than 125 Quebec novels by, among others, Michel Tremblay, Jacques Poulin, Anne Hébert, François Gravel, Marie-Claire Blais, and Roch Carrier.
