Mai at the Predators' Ball

Marie Claire Blais, 1939 - French-Canadian writer Marie Claire Blais was born in 1939. Her first published novel, "La Belle Bete" (1959; Mad Shadows, 1960), was received with mixed reviews. It tells the story of a family in her native Quebec Province that is shut off from other people and love. Blais has also written plays and poetry and used poetic techniques in the novella "Le Jour est Noir" (1962; The Day is Dark, 1967). Her best known novel, "Une Saison dans la Vie d'Emmanuel" (1965; A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, 1966), won France's Prix Medicis and tells the bleak story of people trapped in their worn degraded, poverty-stricken worlds.

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