But behind the lofty reasons for establishing a national park – preservation of the environment, educational opportunities – are the coarse politically and economically motivated attempts at creating “a coherent national story,” some of them as cringe-worthy as they are fascinating. It is this forging of a national story that Claire Elizabeth Campbell, associate professor of history at Bucknell University, deciphers in Nature, Place, and Story.
On the cover of Wrestling with Colonialism on Steroids, a portrait of author Zebedee Nungak appears superimposed on a photo of what Hydro-Québec calls “the giant’s staircase.” This spillway for the Robert-Bourassa Dam on the La Grande River boasts ten steps blasted from bedrock that each exceeds the span of two football fields. It is a tourist attraction of the James Bay region – symbolic of the monumental scale and technological prowess of a power-generating system that the Quebec government trumpeted as “the Project of the Century” when announcing plans to build it in 1971. For the Inuit of Nunavik, however, the giant’s staircase conjures up the provincial Goliath that once threatened their homeland in northern Quebec with proposed hydroelectric installations on the Great Whale and Caniapiscau Rivers.
British cartoonist and illustrator Tom Gauld is the author of the graphic novels Goliath, Mooncop, and You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack. Baking with Kafka is his recent collection of short comics, many of which have already been published in The Guardian, New Scientist, and The New York Times. Gauld’s drawings are simple, yet perfectly executed, without any superfluous detail. His short strips (one to eight panels) are usually funny, but above all, they’re smart and insightful.
The ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud rest in Northern Iraq, some thirty kilometres outside the city of Mosul, where they were preserved as a heritage site for more than three thousand years. Readers find themselves there in the opening of Poppies of Iraq, a touching autobiography by Brigitte Findakly with drawings by her husband and collaborator, Lewis Trondheim.
Julie Maroh, known for her lyrical, evocative graphic novels, including Blue is the Warmest Colour and Skandalon, delves into the quotidian details of love in this newly translated work. She seeks to present the ins and outs of romance and sex as experienced by those whose stories are less often told. From her introduction: “I want this book to be an homage to all the loving beings who go against what is expected of them, sometimes risking their lives in the process.”
Jacques Filippi and John McFetridge have assembled an impressive roster of Francophone (most translated by Katie Shireen Assef) and Anglophone writers for Montreal Noir, the second volume in Akashic Books’s long-running Noir series to feature a Canadian city. As per the format of the series, which began with Brooklyn Noir in 2004, each of the fifteen contributors sets their story primarily within a specific Montreal neighbourhood or area.
Trauma Castle is a zine I’ve bought several times as gifts for loved ones. When I brought it home the first time, my partner read the zine over my shoulder one evening and was rendered speechless. She was speechless for two reasons: she was shocked at the violence Billy had experienced as a child, which they were describing in the zine, and she was impressed that the intimacy, terror, and complexity of that violence were being shared.
Armand Gamache is now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec. He’s in charge, the boss of the whole Sûreté, but to deal with the great challenges that await him, he surrounded himself with his usual, trusted team. After cleaning out the corruption that had taken over the Sûreté, he now needs to stop, or at least put a serious dent, in the province’s crime levels. That, and solve another murder in Three Pines.
Alfredo Cutipa, the protagonist in Alejandro Saravia’s novel Red, Yellow, Green, is a Bolivian in his thirties residing in Montreal. Burdened by the past, he now haunts the city, its streets, metro, cafés, and bars. His entanglements, including a love affair with a Kurdish freedom-fighter named, of all things, Bolivia, collide with his memories to set off consecutive detonations in a labyrinthine narrative that lodges like shrapnel – bracing and painful.
