Novel
Dust Over the City
Poussière sur la ville
André Langevin · 1953
Synopsis
Macklin, the asbestos town, grey with dust. Alain Dubois, a young doctor from the city, settles there with Madeleine, his young wife. He finds an established colleague, Dr Lafleur, a priest, Kouri's restaurant and Jim's taxi. Madeleine is bored in this closed-in town and takes a lover, Richard Hétu. The affair causes a scandal, part of the town turns its back on the doctor, and Alain, rather than condemning, watches the affair as a spectator.
Context
The author's second novel, the book was published in 1953 in Montreal, by the publisher that had awarded it a prize, and in Paris by Robert Laffont. The story is told in the present tense and in the first person by the doctor himself, which gives it, according to a 1973 study, the feel of a private diary; critics have compared it to Camus. The English translation by John Latrobe and Robert Gottlieb appeared in Toronto and New York, and Arthur Lamothe made a film from it in the second half of the sixties, on a screenplay by the author.
Who it is for
A novel of a little over two hundred pages, in a spare language; the action counts for less in it than the narrator's gaze.
Prizes and reception
Prix du Cercle du livre de France; translated into English as early as 1955 under the title Dust Over the City.
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