Spring Tides

Peacefully employed on an uninhabited island, Teddy Bear, a translator of comic strips, lives in the company of his faithful dictionary, his marauding cat, Matousalem, and the Prince, his tennis ball machine. Convinced that the translator’s happiness is in jeopardy, his boss helicopters in a few solitude-seeking companions: the lovely and elusive Marie, the aging nudist Featherhead with her extroverted Chihuahua in tow, Professor Moccasin, the somewhat deaf comic book scholar, the irritable Author, the Ordinary Man, and the Organizer, sent to "sensitize the population." The feverish pitch of the island’s discordant chorus rises with the spring tides. Jacques Poulin’s hilarious philosophical fable is an existential masterpiece.

Born in Saint-Gédéon-de-Beauce, Jacques Poulin is the author of fourteen novels. Among his many honors are the Governor General's Award, the Molson Prize in the Arts, the Gilles-Corbeil Prize, and the France-Québec Prize. He lives in Québec City.

Sheila Fischman has published more than 125 translations of contemporary French-Canadian. Fischman was named to the Order of Canada in 2002 and to the Ordre national du Québec in 2008; in the same year she received the Molson Prize in the Arts.