Alain Farah

Mille secrets mille dangers

February 3, 2022
Novel
512 pages
130 × 197 mm
23 €
9782896985272
978-2-8969-8527-2

“série QR” collection

																Alain Farah, Mille secrets mille dangers
																Alain Farah, Mille secrets mille dangers

A groundbreaking novel in which time’s relentless march is knocked off kilter, that unfolds in twenty-four hours and twelve non-linear chapters, Mille secrets mille dangers is an absurd and painful comedy about life taking more than it gives.

Alain marries Virginie in the crypt of Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montréal. For all intents and purposes, it is the happiest day of his life. The groom is surrounded by his in-laws, his best friend and his parents, Lebanese Egyptians who fled the wars in the Middle East for Québec, where they waged another sort of war—an intimate and merciless family war of divorce, lawyers and damage. The evil eye bides its time. As the celebration approaches, Alain goes from bad to worse. His insomnia, anxiety and illness are back. And today, his cousin Édouard, his best man, loses his footing, swept into the mad mechanics of denial of biblical proportions.
Alain prays for fate to spare him, for his big day to be one of celebration and healing, but a cursed name resurfaces from the past—a name that immediately takes shape in a voice, a body, a story. Everything we try to forget, everything we refuse to see, everything we hate demands its pound of flesh.

As you make your bed, you must lie in it. Because life, ya Alain, is a dormant trap in the prison of time. Yes, life, ya ebni, it doesn’t last: some joy, deep pain, a thousand secrets, a thousand dangers.

Governor General’s Award 2022
The author

Born in Montréal in 1979 to Lebanese Egyptian parents, Alain Farah is a writer and professor of literature at McGill University. He has published a collection of poems entitled Quelque chose se détache du port (2004) and three novels: Matamore nº 29 (2008), Pourquoi Bologne (2013) and Mille secrets mille dangers (2022) at Le Quartanier. He is also the author of the essay Le gala des incomparables : invention et résistance chez Olivier Cadiot et Nathalie Quintane, (Classiques Garnier, 2013). In 2017, he penned the stage adaptation of Denys Arcand’s Le Déclin de l’empire américain directed by Patrice Dubois, which has been performed nearly 80 times.

Strong points

Film adaption in progress

A bestseller in Canada

February 3, 2022
Novel
512 pages
130 × 197 mm
23 €
9782896985272
978-2-8969-8527-2

“série QR” collection