Between the Island and the Turtle

In the tumult of the pandemic, a writer hopes the quarantine might provide the space to finally complete a decades-old project on her travels throughout Latin America. But an unexpected disease suddenly clouds her eyes. Poetic, inventive, introspective, Between the Island and the Turtle follows the author’s shifts in vision from past to present, shedding light on what it is to witness suffering and illness, ultimately questioning what literature can do in times of crisis.

AUTHOR

Anita Anand

ANITA ANAND is an author, translator and language teacher from Montreal. She is the author of Swing in the House and Other Stories, which won the 2015 Concordia University First Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2016 Relit Award for Fiction and the Montreal Literary Diversity Prize. Her novel, A Convergence of Solitudes, was nominated for the 2022 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2023 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award. Her previous translations include Nirliit by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel, which was nominated for the 2018 John Glassco Prize, and Lightness by Fanie Demeule.

Reviews

With her precise and deeply moving writing the author takes us on a journey between the worlds that shape her identityNorth and South America Malia NaviaChtelaine

A hybrid text bridging autofiction and social reflection that explores the role of literature in times of crisisAudreyAnne BlaisLa Presse

This novel is about loss about what breaks within you and around you about commitment and the inevitable exhaustion looming around the bend its about the power or lack thereof of literature It is a raised fist a courageous act of resistanceDominique Le mieuxLes libraires