Eucalyptus

Born in Chile in 1969, Mauricio Segura grew up in Montreal and studied at Universite de Montreal and McGill University. A well-known journalist and documentary filmmaker, he is the author of three novels and a study of French perceptions of Latin America. His novel Black Alley, published by Biblioasis in 2010, was widely praised as "a gritty look at multiculturalism in practice" (Noah Richler, CBC Radio) that exerts "an urgent complicity rarely seen in other works about racial tensions, multiculturalism and the immigrant experience" (Words Without Borders). Mauricio Segura lives with his family in Montreal. Donald Winkler is a Montreal-based literary translator and documentary filmmaker. He has translated books by the astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, the philosopher Georges Leroux and the novelists Daniel Poliquin and Nadine Bismuth. Winkler is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Award.

"Segura writes with a poetic economy of language, using very few words to create meaningful images ... Winkler's masterful translation is so seamless, readers will think that the novel was written in English ... Segura's novel and his original voice are important additions to the Canadian canon."--Publishers Weekly "An adventurous, hypnotic read."--Ben Woodard, Numero Cinq "The book, originally written in French, is about a Chilean-Canadian man who has returned to his native country to bury his father. Perhaps this international hopscotch begins to describe the magic I felt when opening Eucalyptus ... a beautiful book."--A Geography of Reading "Briskly paced ... The short novel reflects on the vital relation of exile (from one's country, as well as one's past) to such redemptive modes as love, atonement, and belonging. The fulfillment of Alberto's quest to understand his father squares with Segura's strong affirmation of charity and compassion, virtues capable of healing troubled pasts."--The Montreal Review of Books "Ably translated, well-paced, teeming with interesting characters that often speak for whole chapters, and written in a prose that is both lucid and hallucinatory, Eucalyptus is a remarkable, thought-provoking novel with the accessibility of a page-turner."--The Rover