The Harmattan Winds

”[In The Harmattan Winds] a series of law-and-life defying, tragi-comic capers echo Trudel’s experience as a clown and writer of children’s books … The Harmattan Winds waited thirty-nine years to be translated … publication now feels timely, as it explores the consequences of emotional alienation and intercultural ignorance. In a world facing a perfect storm of challenges, The Harmattan Winds reminds us that we have important choices to make.” —Alice-Catherine Carls, Rain Taxi “This tale is told in what may at first seem like a foreign language, probably because it is—one as foreign as anything utterly original, unconstrained by rules or logic. Nonetheless, if you allow it to pour over you, or into you, it soon becomes as lucid as if it were actually your native tongue, the one you understood (and may have been doomed to forget) before you were even born.” —Doon Arbus“Sylvain Trudel has peerless insight into a child’s speech, imagination, and supple sense of wonder. With The Harmattan Winds, he has blessed us with the gift of childhood.” —Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books“The Harmattan Winds is a beguiling fairy tale of a book, indebted as much to Bellow’s Henderson as it is to the immortal Peter Pan, a slender novel of the great adventure that is growing up.” —Rumaan Alam“The Harmattan Winds was a wonderful surprise. It’s a lovely book and also a little fierce. Full of provocative ideas and adventures, and that one-of-a-kind voice of Hugues is a constant delight … So vivid, so quirky, so oddly believable … a very endearing book.” —Robert Plunket“An unusual coming-of-age tale imbued with undercurrents of magic, mystery, and tragedy … In the powerful novel The Harmattan Winds, young men struggle against their circumstances, seeking connections with and acceptance from others.” —Ho Lin, Foreword, starred review“Canadian author Trudel’s debut novel, skillfully translated by Winkler . . adeptly interweaves intriguing African fables, provocative sociopolitical commentary, poetry, and armchair philosophy. This bildungsroman, underscored by a myriad of emotions, offers a portrait of two boys’ desperate longing to feel at home in the world and their search for identity and a place where they can be free of adult intervention and societal pressures.” —Lillian Dabney, Booklist“Lyrical and enigmatic … Trudel sustains a dreamy mood and brings his characters to vivid life. [The Harmattan Winds] is a singular tale of trauma diverted into obsessive fantasy.” — Publishers Weekly “With the spirit of a fairy tale, yet at the same time grounded in small town Quebec (or Canada generally) in an age before video games, computers or many available television channels, this novella surges with energy … The magic of this coming of age tale rests firmly on the imagination, determination, and entirely idiosyncratic worldview of Hugues and Habéké … Fast-paced and original.” — Joseph Schreiber Scofield, Rough Ghosts

Sylvain Trudel is a French-Canadian writer of adult fiction and more than a dozen children’s titles. He earned degrees in science and cinema and worked as a clown, a cucumber picker, and a commercial analyst, before turning to writing. His debut novel, Le Souffle de l’Harmattan (The Harmattan Winds), won both the Prix Molson and Prix Canada-Suisse. His work has been honored with the Prix Saint-Exupery, Prix des libraires du Quebec, and Prix Christie, and in 2007 his novel Le Mer de la tranquilite won the Governor General’s Prize. He lives in Quebec.

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