Nancy Huston

Slow Emergencies opens with an unforgettable scene of childbirth, evokes a loving connection between a woman and man and their children, and describes an irresistible impulse to create a distance from and ultimately to abandon one's family. This powerful, seemingly negative, energy is nevertheless always a movement …

Nancy Huston’s The Goldberg Variations, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Translation, echoes Bach’s Variations in its structure and rhythms, and ultimately, its irony. "Suppose you invite thirty people to your home, people whom you love or have loved, to listen to you perform Bach’s Goldberg …

The year is 1957 and the place is Paris, where the psychic wounds of World War II have barely begun to heal. Saffie, a young German woman, becomes maid, then wife, to Raphael, a privileged French musician who finds her remoteness provocative and irresistable. One day in the old Jewish quarter of the city, where she …