Böcker av Michel Tremblay

Survive! Survive! transports readers to September 1935, to glorious, tragic times in the colourful company of Ti-Lou and "the Duchess" Édouard, whose sparkling exchanges hide indissoluble pain; to sombre, twilight times with Victoire and Télesphore at the bottom of the ruelle des Fortifications, and between Josaphat and Laura Cadieux, his ill-fated daughter who wants at all costs to find her mother, Imelda Beausoleil. "How to survive?" they all ask, inextricably caught in life's cycle of lost illusions and forgotten dreams. Even as this chronicle of resilience dwells in the difficulties and disenchantments of ordinary life, it reveals existences that accommodate a happiness that passes - always too fast and almost too late.The series closes with TK, whose action unfolds in August 1941, when the families of Nana and Gabriel unhappily cram together in a new apartment. Nana, inconsolable after the loss of her two eldest children to tuberculosis, is forced to live with Victoire and Édouard, as well as with Albertine, her husband Paul, and their children, Thérèse and baby Marcel. Outside this unbearably crowded household, war rages and rationing deprives everyone of basic necessities.These characters don't know what readers of Tremblay do: that in a year, in May 1942, Nana - the Fat Woman Next Door - seven months pregnant, will open the fabulous Chronicles of the Plateau-Mont-Royal ...

At the crossroads that lead to the end of childhood, Nana faces the hectic passage of her adolescence and the new responsibilities that fall on her shoulders when her grandmother Josephine approaches death. In parallel, Nina's rebellious mother Maria, languishes back in Montreal, torn between conflicting desires.

It¿s May 1922, wedding preparations are in full swing, and old memories, past desires, and big regrets threaten to turn the big celebration into a big melee.

This play takes a crate of gift stamps, a Montreal kitchen, and 15 women, and mixing fast-moving dialogue, monologue and chorus, produces a critique of "women's place", Quebec society, and modern consumerism.

This classic play has been translated before, but only into a pallid approximation of the original joual. Scots, however, is an energetic and earthy vernacular with a distinctive sound system equal to joual. The play, a landmark in Canadian theatre, can now be truly appreciated in this superb translation, just as audiences in Glasgow and Moscow have learned to laugh with these ladies.