Author Paul Serge Forest won the Francophone Writers’ Award of Excellence for his novel Everything is ori (published in the spring by VLB éditeur). He finished tied with Pierre Ouellette for The wild state (published by Druide).
The novel by Paul Serge Forest, pseudonym of a Montreal doctor who grew up on the North Shore, won the Robert-Cliche prize last March.
Everything is ori was also among the finalists for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Awards, which were announced on October 14, alongside Make the sugars, by Fanny Britt, I showed all my white paws, I don’t have any anymore, by Sylvie Laliberté, Metallic black, by Sébastien Chabot, and Nothing at all, by Olivia Tapiero.
Everything is ori tells the story of the Lelarge family, who control the seafood market on the North Shore of Quebec. When a mysterious character arrives, the Canadian Food Agency opens an investigation that will gradually lead the protagonists to navigate between dream and reality, East and West, true, false and probable. Criticism of Press had described the novel as “abundant and elusive, as unsettling as it is irresistible”.