Who? Where?
“Baraka Books is a Québec-based English-language book publisher specializing in creative and political non-fiction, history and historical fiction, and fiction. Our belief is that books are a haven of freedom and that they remain the foremost vector for change.” (About Us)
“Les livres Baraka est une maison d’édition québécoise qui publie des livres en anglais, notamment des essais politiques et littéraires, des livres d’histoire et des romans historiques et de la fiction. Nous croyons que le livre est un havre de liberté et demeure le plus important vecteur du changement. Le mot baraka, qui existe dans plusieurs langues, signifie, selon la langue, notamment la bénédiction, la sagesse ou la chance.”
First encounter?
Brilliant. I’d reread it in a heartbeat: Eric Dupont’s Songs for the Cold of Heart (2012; Trans. Peter McCambridge, 2018)
Other Baraka Books Reading:
Via the QC FIction imprint, headed by Peter McCambridge, “the very best of a new generation of Quebec storytellers in flawless English translation.”
Jean-Christophe Réhel’s Tatouine (2018; Trans. Katherine Hastings & Peter McCambridge, 2020)
Eric Dupont’s Life in the Court of Matane (2015; Trans. Peter McCambridge, 2nd English edition 2021)
David Clerson’s To See out the Night (2019; Trans. Katia Grubisic, 2021)
Jean-Michel Fortier’s The Unknown Huntsman (2014; Trans. Katherine Hastings, 2016)
Annie Perreault’s The Woman in Valencia (2018; Trans. Ann Marie Boulanger, 2021)
RECENT READ: Matthew Murphy’s A Beckoning War (2016)
Matthew Murphy’s A Beckoning War (2016) situates the reader slightly differently in a Canadian soldier’s experience than other well-known Canadian wartime fiction. Unlike Findley’s The Wars, it focuses on a contemporary recounting (Findley’s was WWI rather than WWII); unlike Kathy Page’s Dear Evelyn, it focuses on the Canadian soldier’s experience in WWII, in and out of Canada, rather than an English soldier’s military experience in Europe.
Jim McFarlane spends two years in his battalion waiting to fully engage in the fight; there are descriptions of ski-training in Alberta, the vast array of tents in Camp Borden just north of Toronto, recruitment marches in Quebec, and guard duties in Halifax. Although his experience in 1944 in Italy is pivotal, expanding the time and space expands readers’ understanding of wartime. “War, for Jim, was nothing but some frantic headlines and grainy pictures, and radio broadcasts with the muted, staticky wails of air-raid sirens in far-off, fabled London.”
Nonetheless, the experience of combat is central to his experience: the “ambient artillery of the surrounding battle” and the “mechanical whine of turrets.” And there is a “hole full of guts and spilled sand from the torn sandbags abutting the rim.” Readers of wartime fiction will have a sense of familiarity, but Murphy’s novel not only tackles a difficult theme but explores it in well-constructed prose, paying particular attention to sentence construction and subtle shifts in tone, to bring a distinct flavour to his debut.
Consider this passage, taking note of the variety of sentence-lengths and the selection of modifiers to further engage readers’ sensory experience: “Jim has strayed into the black and miserable introspection of war: the dead friends of battles past and the gnawing, corrosive dread of battles yet to be. Pull yourself together, man, he thinks. Pull yourself together or you’ll be behind a desk in London. Or back home. Or jittering and rocking yourself on a hospital bed, courtesy of the army shrink.” (The word ‘corrosive’ stands out for me, the sounds seeming to suit a wartime tale. And I appreciate ‘jittering and rocking’, the balance of it and the readily relatable scene on a precarious hospital bed.)
Another way in which the author’s skill stood out for me was the judicious use of letter-writing; readers view some received correspondence, too, but most revealing were Jim’s early attempts to summarize his experience of enlisted life, how the summary varied first in a letter home and, next, in a letter to his lover, the process interrupted to briefly view his inner turmoil compared to the narrative he constructs for the two women.
Occasionally I found myself wondering whether there were “too many rhinestones” on a page, as Wayson Choy warned against. Consider the “thumb-smudged sepia-toned picture of Marianne”: one of those adjectives would do, but I can clearly imagine that photograph as though I were holding it; I appreciate that sensitivity to detail and (although not so obvious in that example) the gently elevated vocabulary throughout. Murphy selects words like a poet, attends to atmosphere like an artist, and who doesn’t prefer extraneous rhinestones to a work with no shimmer.
I thought A Beckoning War was well done, and that he was careful to differentiate it from other war novels.
As for this publisher, you know I love it! I’ve definitely read more by the QCFiction imprint… I wonder why. Maybe because it made a big publishing push when it came out? But, also, I seem to really love the translated stuff.
I’m curious to see what theme and setting draws his attention next. That struck me too: I don’t know!
It’s late and I’m getting picky.
Can you specialize in everything without becoming a generalist?
Are there any publishers, not writing manuals for Chinese and Korean machinery, who specialize in flawed English translations? That would be interesting.
Hah, I can see where that statement would seem a little vague without the context of there being such an intense divide between Québec and the rest of literary Canada. It’s quite likely that even a voracious CanLit reader living outside Québec would never read Québecois writers, whether writers in translation or English-language Québeckers. There is a separate writers’ union in Québec, too, for English-speaking writers, and I’ve heard that it’s difficult to navigate that scene, where questions of belonging and voice can be thorny. So I suspect that the first half of that sentence is the more weighty part and, after that, either the work appeals to the editorial staff or, it doesn’t, and you might want to move to a neighbouring province. Hee hee
Songs for the Cold of Heart is one of the books that I truly regret not reading, I hope to get it from the library one of these days. When I attended the Giller readings where he read a section from it, I was utterly delighted and absorbed by his words. The weird sense of humour captivated me! And you know I love Renee-Marie Lavoie, I think I have a thing for Quebec writers LOL
That’s true: his reading (I didn’t attend in person that year but heard him read at some point, maybe via a library event, maybe IFOA, I can’t recall) brought out additional layers. Why not try the reissue of his shorter novel, the one with the Heather O’Neill introduction? Shorter, but still enchanting.
Sounds like a well written book. I like the passage you pulled out. Corrosive is an excellent word choice. Gott a love it when authors are so precise with their words.
That’s true: I want to spend more time reading words when I am regularly reminded how much time the author spent selecting them!
Books are a foremost vector for change. Loved it, Buried!
Exactly! 🙂
Another fascinating publisher and a great added dimension to the Month!
Thanks, Liz!
Another great sounding little publisher. I was interested in what you said about the author’s use of letter writing in A Beckoning War, it’s a device I rather like, it does help the reader get inside a character’s head, often providing another perspective.
Yes, exactly: I like letters too, and I would have enjoyed more of that myself! But some readers feel cheated by that device, so I can see where an author/editor might be reluctant to employ it more extensively.
How do you find these indie presses? Do you just happen upon a book that you enjoy and look up other authors they’ve published? Just curious.
And, yes, that’s exactly it: I can recall, for all of the American ones, the “first” one that brought them onto my reading Radar! If your library branch doesn’t have very many, perhaps there’s another branch that specializes more in that area, when it comes to collection-building? There are definitely branches here that are more likely to shelve works from indie presses…
I hadn’t heard of these guys at all. Looks like interesting stuff. I like the quotes you give from A Beckoning War.
Never ceases to amaze me, this border between Anglo- and Franco-lit here…hard to reach past that!
It’s mostly English, though, it seems? (So I could have know about it…) Just looking through their list, I saw they got the latest Ishmael Reed, which is a nice score.
Yes! Even then it’s like another country! And I agree: those Reeds would top my list!
I find Reed uneven, but when he’s good, he’s really good, I think.
I’m so glad you’re featuring indies from Canada – sounds like another great find!