Les Sables Mouvants / Shifting Sands

Text in English & French. This bilingual edition is the first English translation of Aquin’s ground–breaking novella. It is also the first time it appears in French, outside of the multi-volume critical edition. In this novella the young Aquin turns away from ordinary narrative towards the signature qualities of his later writing. Alone in exotic Naples, an impassioned Francois anticipates the arrival of his girlfriend Helene. Uncertainty and impatience warp his waiting into an obsessive melange of recollection and speculation. His interior monologue threads its way through a disorienting universe of a claustrophobic dilapidated hotel room, hostile incomprehension in the streets of a foreign city, and a train station where the anticipated rendezvous cannot occur. Unremitting psychological exploration drives the narrator towards an extreme personal apocalypse. Frank sexuality, grotesque imagery and an autobiographical context helped to keep this story from previously being published for decades. Joseph Jones’ accompanying essay situates the novella with reference to other works in which psychic conditions generate a striking literary representation that appears to operate largely outside of any conscious tradition. Included also is an Appreciation by Marie-Claire Blais.