Gérard Étienne, Vous n'êtes pas seul

Simone Grossman (Bar-Ilan University)

Ed. by Emir Delic, Université Sainte-Anne
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.4: Canadian Writing and Culture: Francophone .
Vol. editors: Emir Delic (Université Sainte-Anne), Eftihia Mihelakis (Brandon University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2001

Places

Canada (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Gérard Étienne’s Vous n’êtes pas seul [You Are Not Alone] (2007) is a socially engaged novel, mostly autobiographical. The main character is a Black homeless man who had escaped from a psychiatric asylum in the middle of a snow storm and was taken in, half frozen, by a kind woman, insensible to her neighbor’s racial and xenophobic remarks. The author emblemizes those immigrants, whether from Haiti or other parts of the world, who are rejected from the Quebec social circles.

The narrative takes place in Montreal on a very cold winter day. The cold, the snow and the frozen winds are depicted as predatory monsters “that grab you by the throat” and “force you to bend, t…

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2422 words

Citation: Grossman, Simone. "Vous n'êtes pas seul". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 March 2018 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35844, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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