Eric Dupont ist ein gefeierter kanadischer Autor und Übersetzer, dessen Werke sich oft mit Themen wie Identität, kulturellen Begegnungen und der Komplexität menschlicher Beziehungen auseinandersetzen. Seine Prosa zeichnet sich durch sprachliche Erfindungsgabe und einen originellen Witz aus, der die Tiefen menschlicher Erfahrung beleuchtet. Dupont verbindet meisterhaft tiefgründige Reflexionen mit erzählerischer Leichtigkeit und zieht die Leser in seine reich gestalteten Welten. Sein Schreiben spiegelt die einzigartige Perspektive eines Autors wider, der sich fließend in verschiedenen sprachlichen und kulturellen Landschaften bewegt.
"Over the course of the twentieth century, three generations of the funny, touching, and wholly unpredictable Lamontagne family will weather love, jealousy, revenge, and death. Their drama and passion will propel their rise and fall while taking them around the world from Quebec to Nagasaki to Berlin ... until they finally confront the secrets of their complicated pasts" -- publisher's description
Nadia Comaneci's gold-medal performance at the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976 is the starting point for a whole new generation. Eric Dupont watches the performance on TV, mesmerized. The son of a police officer (Henry VIII) and a professional cook--as he likes to remind us--he grows up in the depths of the Quebec countryside with a new address for almost every birthday and little but memories of his mother to hang on to. His parents have divorced, and the novel's narrator relates his childhood, comparing it to a family gymnastics performance worthy of Nadia herself. Life in the Court of Matane is unforgiving and we explore different facets of it (dreams of sovereignty, schoolyard bullying, imagined missions to Russia, poems by Baudelaire), each based around an encounter with a different animal, until the narrator befriends a great horned owl, summons up the courage to let go of the upper bar forever, and makes his glorious escape.