Antonine Maillet (Author), Barbara Godard (Translator)
The Tale of Don L'Orignal
Published: July 30, 2004
Fiction / Novels / Historical Fiction
Paperback: 9780864924193 $16.95
Winner of the 1979 Governor General's Award for fiction, Antonine Maillet's virtuoso creation, The Tale of Don L'Orignal, is now back in print. Maillet's tale begins one day, not so very long ago but back in the youth of the world, when a hay-covered island materialized off shore, an island populated by fleas who soon took human form. The leader of this uncouth crew of have-nots, Don l'Orignal, wore a moose-antler crown as his badge of office. At his right hand were his brave lieutenants: his son, Noume, and his general, Michel-Archange. The general's wife, the doughty charwoman, spy, and rabble-rouser La Sagouine, had one finger in every pie and one raised to her neighbour, La Sainte.
With the insider's accumulation of oral history, gossip, and shrewd hindsight, Antonine Maillet has conjured up a fictional Acadia that her ancestors would relish. Perhaps those who could read it would have even understood it: she wrote Don l'Orignal in a version of 16th-century domestic French that she adapted for modern readers. In this far-fetched, but always entertaining fable, Maillet holds up a mirror to Acadian history and to an all too fallible human nature.
Author
Antonine Maillet, a native of Bouctouche, New Brunswick, has spent her life conjuring the impossible into being. She is the author of wry and wildly inventive adult fiction, children’s books, radio and television scripts, and more than a dozen plays.
Maillet’s sparkling imagination, versatility, and commitment to giving Acadian culture a voice have been recognized at home and abroad. She was the first non-citizen of France to win the prestigious Prix Goncourt, which she received for Pélagie-la-Charette. Her now classic monologue La Sagouine won the Chalmers Canadian Play Award; Don l’Orignal won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction; and On the Eighth Day, Wayne Grady’s rollicking translation of Le Huitième Jour, won the Governor General’s Award for Translation.
Barbara Godard teaches English and Women`s Studies at York University. Her nimble translation of The Tale of Don l'Orignal, the first of her many distinguished book-length translations, recreates the spirit and the raucous dialogue in an English that's colourful, familiar, and just strange enough to capture the magic of the Fleas.
