Nancy Huston | |
|---|---|
 Huston in 2008 | |
| Born | Nancy Louise Huston 16 September 1953 Calgary, Alberta |
| Occupation | Novelist, translator |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Notable awards | Grand prix des lectrices de Elle |
| Spouse | Tzvetan Todorov (m. ??; div. 2014) |
| Partner | Guy Oberson (20??–present) |
| Children | 2, including Léa |
Nancy Louise Huston, OC (born September 16, 1953) is a Canadian novelist and essayist, a longtime resident of France, who writes primarily in French and translates her own works into English. [1]
Huston was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the city in which she lived until age fifteen, at which time her family moved to Wilton, New Hampshire, where she attended High Mowing School. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College in New York City, where she was given the opportunity to spend a year of her studies in Paris. Arriving in Paris in 1973, Huston obtained a master's degree from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, writing a thesis on swear words under the supervision of Roland Barthes. [2]
She was the second wife of Bulgarian-French historian and philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, with whom she had two children, daughter Léa and son Sacha; [3] she and Todorov divorced in 2014. [4] Huston now shares her life with Swiss painter Guy Oberson.[ citation needed ]
Because French was a language acquired at school and university, Huston found that the combination of her eventual command of the language and her distance from it as a non-native speaker helped her to find her literary voice. Since 1980, Huston has published over 45 books of fiction and non-fiction, including theatre and children's books. Some of her publications are self-translations of previously published works. Essentially she writes in French and subsequently self-translates into English but Plainsong (1993) was written first in English and then self-translated to French as Cantique des plaines (1993) – it was, however, the French version which first found a publisher.
While Huston's often controversial works of non-fiction have been well-received, her fiction has earned her the most critical acclaim. Her first novel, Les variations Goldberg (1981), was awarded the Prix Contrepoint and was shortlisted for the Prix Femina. She translated this novel into English as The Goldberg Variations (1996).
Her next major award came in 1993 when she was received the Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction in French for Cantique des Plaines (1993). This was initially contested as it was a translation of Plainsong (1993), but Huston demonstrated that it was an adaptation and kept the prize. A subsequent novel, La virevolte (1994), won the Prix "L" and the Prix Louis-Hémon. It was published in English in 1996 as Slow Emergencies. [5]
Huston's novel, Instruments des ténèbres, has been her most successful novel yet, being shortlisted for the Prix Femina, and the Governor General's Award. It was awarded the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, as well as both the Prix des lectrices (Elle Québec) and the Prix du livre Inter in 1997. [6]
In 1998, she was nominated for a Governor General's Award for her novel L'Empreinte de l'ange. The next year she was nominated for a Governor General's Award for translating the work into English as The Mark of the Angel .
In 1999, she appeared in the film Set Me Free (Emporte-moi), also collaborating on the screenplay.
Her works have been translated into many languages from Chinese to Russian.
In 2005, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, [7]
In 2006, she received the Prix Femina for the novel Lignes de faille and which, as Fault Lines , has been published by Atlantic Books and was shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize. [8]
In 2007, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège.
In 2010, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa. [9]
In 2012, she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. [10] That same year, she won the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award for her novel, Infrared. [11]
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Canadian poet and critic Frank Davey in "Big, Bad and Little Known: The Anglophone-Canadian Nancy Huston" (2004), is critical of Huston's English writing style. In response to this, Joseph Pivato in "Nancy Huston Meets le Nouveau Roman" (2016), contends that Huston was influenced by the French writers of le Nouveau Roman and their theory of composition.
Date of first French-language edition followed by date of first English-language edition.
Huston calls the first instalment a récit or fact-based narrative, and the second a roman or novel.
Gabrielle Roy was a Canadian author from St. Boniface, Manitoba and one of the major figures in French Canadian literature.
Jacques Godbout, OC, CQ is a Canadian novelist, essayist, children's writer, journalist, filmmaker and poet. By his own admission a bit of a dabbler (touche-à-tout), Godbout has become one of the most important writers of his generation, with a major influence on post-1960 Quebec intellectual life.
Tzvetan Todorov was a Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. He was the author of many books and essays, which have had a significant influence in anthropology, sociology, semiotics, literary theory, intellectual history and culture theory.
The Prix Femina is a French literary prize awarded each year by an exclusively female jury. The prize, which was established in 1904, is awarded to French-language works written in prose or verse by male or female writers, and is announced on the first Wednesday of November each year. Four categories of prizes are awarded: Prix Femina, Prix Femina essai, Prix Femina étranger, and Prix Femina des lycéens. A Prix Femina spécial is occasionally awarded.
This is an article about literature in Quebec.
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Dominique Fortier is a Canadian novelist and translator from Quebec, who won the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 2016 Governor General's Awards for her novel Au péril de la mer.
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