The Double Feature of the Murdered Woman
By (Author) Donald Winkler
By (author) Carole David
Guernica Editions,Canada
Guernica Editions,Canada
9th December 2024
Canada
General
Non Fiction
811.6
Paperback
100
Width 127mm, Height 203mm
It's an ordinary summer in the twenty-first century. There's a heat wave in Rome, where the poet has just set down her valises. What is she seeking amid the crowds of tourists, she, Italian-born, exiled to America, who speaks the language only haltingly In the capital's streets, at the railroad station or the museum, an exuberant city life rubs shoulders with a thousand tragedies. Rome is a theatre of recurrent violence, the cinema where you are seated, apprehensive, watching The Double Feature of the Murdered Woman. For six months the poet wanders the city, alert to the phantoms passing by. This book could be the written record of her conversations with ghosts. It's a return to the crime scene, a renewal of vows, face to face with a haunting past: that of Italy, and the blood drenched story of women.
Donald Winkler was born in Winnipeg in 1940, graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1961, and as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar, did graduate study at the Yale School of Drama. From 1967 to 1995 he was a film director and writer at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal, and since the 1980s, a translator of Quebec literature: in 1994, 2011, and 2013 he won the Governor General's Award for French to English translation, and has been a finalist for the prize on three other occasions.
Carole David was born in Montreal and earned a PhD in literary studies from the University of Sherbrooke. She has taught at the Cgep du Vieux Montral and was head of the Public Lending Rights Program at the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2006, she was elected president of the Maison de la posie de Montral. David received the Prix mile-Nelligan for Terroristesand in 1996 she was awarded the Terrasses Saint-Sulpice poetry prize by the magazine Estuaire for her poetry collection Abandons. Her novel Impala was a finalist for the Journal de Montral prize and for the City of Montreal prize. La Maison d'Ophlie was on the shortlist for the Governor General's Award for French-language poetry in 1999. She received the Prix Alain-Grandbois in 2011 for her collection Manuel de potique l'intention des jeunes filles; the same collection was also included on the shortlist for the Governor General's poetry award. In 2020 se was named the recipient of Quebec's Prix Athanase-David for lifetime achievement in literature.