Jason Freure writes about Montreal and its literature. His work has appeared in Canadian Notes and Queries, Carte Blanche, and Maisonneuve. He is the editor of The Town Crier and operations manager at The Puritan. His first book of poetry, Everybody Rides the Bus in a City of Losers, will be released fall 2018 by ECW.
March 20, 2018
Hamidou Diop is a bit character in Hubert Aquin’s novel Prochain épisode (translated into English as Next Episode). A Wolof double agent, he occupies only a few lines in the novel, but in the last fifteen years, he’s reappeared at least three times in the works of other writers. Kaie Kellough and Alain Farah have both revived Aquin’s minor spy for their own ends, responding to Aquin’s representation of race and using Diop to reimagine the role of racial minorities in the narrative of Quebec nationalism.