Augustino and the Choir of Destruction

In *Augustino and the Choir of Destruction* literary legend and three-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award Marie-Claire Blais delivers the third volume in the prize-winning series (*These Festive Nights*, *Thunder and Light*, *Augustino and the Choir of Destruction*, and *Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom*) acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction.

*Augustino and the Choir of Destruction* is set on an island in the Gulf of Mexico that is home to the full spectrum of humanity: the rich, the poor, the powerful, the humble, artists, criminals. With her unique, signature use of punctuation, Marie-Claire Blais manages to brilliantly show in one flashing stroke men and women; victims and tormentors; child kamikaze pilots and petty thieves from Bahama Street; Charles, a great poet cut down by AIDS; Cinderella, a transvestite prostituting himself to a customer at the Porte du Baiser saloon; Caroline, an artist and photographer who has seen all the hidden treasures of the world; and Augustino, a clairvoyant child-writer. These individual destinies combine in Blais' vision to form a single harmonic texture.