Quebec novelist and playwright Abla Farhoud died on 1er December, the day after the disappearance of another great lady of literature, Marie-Claire Blais, Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature announced on Friday.
Abla Farhoud “left us peacefully” at the age of 76, “surrounded by her family”, the statement said. “She has led a prolific career as a playwright and novelist, rewarded with numerous prizes and the loyalty of numerous readers, in Quebec and around the world”.
The Quebecor Book Group also confirmed the news. “She was for years one of the most influential voices of the VLB publisher houses and the Hexagon”, one can read in an email.
The author notably received the France-Quebec Literary Prize in 1999 for her novel Happiness has a slippery tail. We also owe him Omar’s Fool – ” When we know that death is there, life takes on its full importance, ”she wrote there. The last of the snoreaux and In the bright sun hide your daughters, published in 2017 and finalist for the Literary Prize for college students the following year.
His most recent work, Havre-Saint-Pierre, forever, should be published next year by VLB éditeur.
Abla Farhoud was born in Lebanon, where she returned to live from 1965 to 1969 after immigrating to Quebec in 1951, at the age of 17. In the bright sun hide your daughters told of the novelist’s return to the land of her childhood. “This book has opened my eyes to a lot of things,” she confided to Press in 2017. Before, I hated this country. But I found that I loved her a lot more than I thought. And that I like some people who are part of Lebanon. ”
After a spell at the University of Vincennes, in France, Abla Farhoud chose Montreal definitively from 1973. She is the mother of Mathieu Farhoud-Dionne, alias Chafiik, member of the rap group Loco Locass, and of the author- singer-songwriter Alecka.
“Abla was luminous until the end, surrounded by her children, her family, her friends,” wrote her friend Claudine Bourbonnais, journalist and presenter at RDI. What beauty, Abla. And what lessons of humanity you taught us until your last breath. As in your magnificent novels and plays. ”