The Goddess of Fireflies [Paperback]

The year is 1996, and small-town life for 14-year-old Catherine is made up of punk rock, skaters, shoplifting, and the ghost of Kurt Cobain. Her parents are too busy divorcing to pay her headful of unspent angst much attention. But after she tries mess – a PCP variant – for the first time, her budding rebellion begins to spiral out of control. Universally acclaimed as the modern-day coming-of-age story for a generation of Québécois youth growing up in the 1990s, Geneviève Pettersen’s award-winning debut novel both shocked and titillated readers in its original French, who quickly ordained it a contemporary classic and a runaway bestseller. Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, the hotly tipped Québécois director behindInch-Allah, is currently adapting the story to film. Now Esplanade Books is honored to presentThe Goddess of Firefliesto English readers for the first time in a powerful translation from award-winning novelist Neil Smith.

Born in 1982,Geneviève Pettersenstudied sociology of religions and literature at the University of Quebec in Montreal before working in advertising. She is now a columnist for several magazines and works as a screenwriter for a TV series. This is her first book. A three-time nominee for the Journey Prize,Neil Smithpublished his debut collection,Bang Crunch, in 2007. It was later published in America, Britain, France, Germany, and India. It was chosen as a best book of the year by theWashington Postand theGlobe and Mail. His second book, a novel calledBoo, was published in May 2015 in the U.S., Britain, and Canada.