Gil Courtemanche made his literary reputation with his first novel, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, which confronted the Rwandan genocide. International in scope, it reflected Courtemanche’s longstanding interest in politics in the developing world, which he has also addressed as a columnist in Le Devoir. It became a bestseller, translated into numerous languages. Courtemanche’s second novel, Une belle mort, appeared last year. Under the able hand of Kingston-based writer and translator Wayne Grady, it is now available to English readers as A Good Death.
The novel’s lengthy epigram, from the work of Mexican writer Paco Ignatio Taibo II, points to the difficult demands of novel writing, making use of a tone of dark humour that Courtemanche employs throughout A Good Death: “To write a novel is fundamentally an act of impudence … It is perhaps for that reason that they take away my pen at night. Not, as they pretend, to prevent me...
Norman Ravvin’s recent novel is The Joyful Child (Gaspereau Press, 2011). Previous books include a story collection, Sex, Skyscrapers and Standard Yiddish (Paperplates Books, 1997), and a volume of essays entitled A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity and Memory (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997). He lives in Montreal.
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