The Hollow Beast

Don Quixote meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit in this slapstick epic about destiny, family demons, and revenge.

In 1911, in a hockey game in Quebec's Gasp Peninsula, local tough guy Billy Joe Pictou fires the puck into Monti Bouge's mouth. When Monti collapses with his head across the goal line, Victor Bradley, erstwhile referee and local mailman, rules that the goal counts. Monti's ensuing revenge for this injustice sprawls over three generations, one hundred years and dozens of alcohol-soaked tall tales, from treachery in northern gold-mining camps to the appearance of a legendary beast by turns playful and ferocious. It's up to Monti's grandson, Fran ois, to make sense of the vendetta between Monti and Bradley that has shaped the destiny of their town and everyone who lives there. In a sumptuous, unpredictable language and slapstick comedy, Christophe Bernard reveals himself as a master of epic storytelling.

"A tale with plenty of momentum that covers a whole century and is at once fantastic, funny, cruel, brilliant." — Le Journal de Montréal

"Christophe Bernard scores a huge hit with The Hollow Beast...His writing is flamboyant with vernacular flights. An example of utter mastery." — Le Devoir (Montreal)

"Christophe Bernard has hollowed out the past like a beast and, like an alchemist, has excavated a language of pure gold. He has added a great, savage nugget to Quebec literature." — La Presse (Montreal)

Originally from Carleton-sur-Mer in the Gaspé region of Quebec, Christophe Bernard studied literature in Quebec City, Aix-en-Provence and Berlin. A prolific literary translator, Bernard was a finalist for the 2016 Governor General's Literary Award for English-to-French Translation. The Hollow Beast, a finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in French, won the Quebec-Ontario Prize, the Quebec Booksellers' Prize and the Jovette-Bernier Prize. Christophe Bernard lives in Burlington, Vermont.

Lazer Lederhendler is a four-time finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award, and won the award in 2008 for his translation of Nikolski. His translation of The Immaculate Conception by Gaétan Soucy was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the French-to-English Translation Prize from the Quebec Writers' Federation. Lederhendler lives in Montreal, where he teaches English and film at the Collège international des Marcellines.