Judges and Juries

These days, Canada’s literary scene seems to depend upon prize culture almost as much as upon government grants. Making the long list of a major award is one of the few ways that writers secure media coverage, and the effect seems particularly strong when consecration comes from the old imperial metropoles. The English-language press here thus discovered Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience after it was considered for the Booker, and the stars of Quebec’s 2023 literary season were anointed by the French.

In November, Kevin Lambert became the third Quebecer to win France’s Prix Médicis, after Marie-Claire Blais and Dany Laferrière, for Que notre joie demeure. (An English translation by Donald Winkler, The Joy of Our Desiring, will appear from Biblioasis later this year.) The Chicoutimi native already had two well-received novels under his belt, and the win cemented the thirty-two-year-old’s status as an increasingly rare species: the...