Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Fiction Classics

The Town Below

by (author) Roger Lemelin

introduction by Michael Gnarowski

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Mar 2013
Category
Classics, Historical, Religious
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781459700055
    Publish Date
    Mar 2013
    List Price
    $9.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781554888030
    Publish Date
    Mar 2013
    List Price
    $26.99

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

The Town Below changed the face of Québécois literature.

The Town Below takes place in St. Joseph Parish of Quebec City’s Saint-Sauveur suburb. Saint-Sauveur is a parochial and provincial place where narrow piety and corruption can be found in every corner, and Denis and Lise, two adolescents in love, scandalize the town with their affair. Scheming politicians and clergymen and grasping social climbers mix with salt-of-the-earth citizens in a rough-and-tumble satiric assault on pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec mores and attitudes.

The Town Below won the Prix David and the Prix de la langue française. Lemelin was also awarded Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships. A bestseller in Quebec when it originally appeared, The Town Below has been called the "pioneer novel of working-class Quebec" and exploded, with great controversy, the smothering social and religious strictures prevalent among postwar Québécois. The novel was first published in English by Reynal & Hitchcock in 1948.

 

About the authors

Roger Lemelin (1919-1992) was born in working-class Quebec City. He published eight novels and numerous short stories and essays and won several awards for his books. In addition to the awards he won for The Town Below, he also adapted his second novel, Les Plouffe, into the popular CBC-TV show The Plouffe Family, which ran from 1953 to 1959 in French and English.

Roger Lemelin's profile page

Michael Gnarowski co-edited The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada, compiled The Concise Bibliography of E nglish Canadian Literature, and edited the Critical Views on Canadian Writers Series for McGraw-Hill Ryerson. He has written for Encyclopedia Americana, The Canadian Encyclopedia, The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, and The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry. Gnarowski is professor emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Michael Gnarowski's profile page

Editorial Reviews

The historical aspects of The Town Below, along with Lemelin’s cast of characters, offers the new reader an enchanting way to learn about a Canada of long ago.

Toronto Star

Other titles by

Other titles by

The Deserter

by (author) Douglas LePan
introduction by Scott Rayter
series edited by Michael Gnarowski

Flying a Red Kite

by (author) Hugh Hood
series edited by Michael Gnarowski

Making of Modern Poetry in Canada

Essential Commentary on Poetry in English, Third edition

edited by Louis Dudek & Michael Gnarowski

The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada

Essential Commentary on Poetry in English, Third edition

edited by Louis Dudek & Michael Gnarowski

God's Sparrows

by (author) Philip Child
introduction by James R. Calhoun
series edited by Michael Gnarowski

Ringing the Changes

An Autobiography

by (author) Mazo de la Roche
introduction by Heather Kirk & Michael Gnarowski

In Flanders Fields and Other Poems

by (author) John McCrae
foreword by Sir Andrew Macphail
introduction by Michael Gnarowski

The Voyageur Classic Canadian Fiction 7-Book Bundle

All Else Is Folly / Pauline Johnson / The Town Below / Self Condemned / Storm Below / The Yellow Briar / Maria Chapdelaine

by (author) Peregrine Acland, Pauline Johnson, Roger Lemelin, Hugh Garner, Patrick Slater, Louis Hemon & Wyndham Lewis
foreword by Ford Madox Ford
introduction by Brian Busby, Michael Gnarowski, Paul Stuewe & Allan Pero
translated by W.H. Blake

The Voyageur Canadian Biographies 5-Book Bundle

The Firebrand / Mrs. Simcoe's Diary / The Scalpel, the Sword / The Men of the Last Frontier / Pilgrims of the Wild

by (author) Grey Owl, Sydney Gordon, Mary Quayle Innis, Elizabeth Posthuma Simcoe & William Kilbourn
introduction by James Polk, Michael Gnarowski, Julie Allan, Norman Bethune Allan, Susan Ostrovsky & Ronald Stagg
foreword by Hugh Eayrs

The Voyageur Canadian Essays & Criticism 2-Book Bundle

Selected Writings, A.J.M. Smith / The Kindred of the Wild

by (author) A.J.M. Smith & Charles G.D. Roberts
introduction by Michael Gnarowski & James Polk

Related lists