Prochain Épisode

Prochain Épisode

Prochain Épisode is Hubert AQUIN's first novel (1965). Its nameless narrator, like the author, turns his adventures into a spy thriller in order to pass the time while he is detained in the psychiatric ward of a Montréal prison, pending trial for an unspecified revolutionary crime. The psychological thriller develops into a suspenseful confession with suicidal overtones as the individual quest for revolution fails: confronted with H. de Heutz, his enemy and double, in a Swiss chateau, the narrator cannot bring himself to kill this man, a fellow art-lover. The beautiful and elusive K stalks through the novel, possibly a double agent, certainly an allegorical symbol for the protagonist's long-lost love, the Québec nation. Acclaimed by both critics and radicals during the QUIET REVOLUTION, Prochain Épisode is a densely allusive, poetic text, containing a self-referential postmodern theory of art and language. It was translated by Penny Williams in 1967.