In her new novel, journalist, author and Radio-Canada presenter Claudine Bourbonnais evokes strong memories, including her years of study in London. Fate is others tells how she witnessed the arrest of a student at Durham University, where she was studying the Middle East. An event that had upset her. Twenty years later, she and her fellow students, reunited, discovered that their fellow student was involved in terrorist activities.
In 1988, when she was in her early twenties, Claudine left Montreal to study the Middle East at the University of Durham, England. She and her friends then witnessed the disturbing arrest of a graduate student of Palestinian origin, Marwan.
Twenty years later, the friends met again at a meeting in London and learned what had happened. Claudine then realizes that her doubts were justified, but the truth had eluded them.
Claudine Bourbonnais allowed herself to be carried away by writing this book, which is at once a personal story woven from memories, a homage to Gilles, her lover who disappeared too quickly, a portrait of society and a political thriller directly related to the news.
Destiny is the Others is published by Éditions QuébecAmérique. © Editions Quebec America
“After Métis Beach, I began writing a second novel based on these memories of my time studying in England in the late 1980s. I was pretty advanced. Finally, in 2015, my husband became ill. I was with him until his last breath. He died in 2017,” says the author in an interview.
“Even if I managed to reserve a few places to write, I obviously didn’t have the energy, head or focus to continue. I began using these memories to write a novel. And it stuck because of the circumstances and the ordeal. When Danielle Laurin called me in 2021, I said: Wow, bingo! This is the form that the story I wanted to tell will take: a mixture of autobiography and perhaps some fiction.
His studies in London
Diving back into her memories was of great importance to her. “Jean-Paul Sartre wrote: Hell is other people: that is, we give meaning to our existence through the eyes of others. For him, hell meant never being able to escape the judgment of others. I also believe that fate is other people: we are the sum of all those crucial encounters we have in our lives.”
The 1980s
Claudine formulated her story in the 1980s. “I wanted to talk about my generation, which came of age fearing death from AIDS, in an extremely difficult economic environment,” she says.
“The job market was closed to us; we left university not knowing how we would make a living; Interest rates were prohibitive and nuclear war was a real possibility. We were a kind of invisible generation that didn’t care about advertising at all. We were kind of no-future.”
At the same time, it was a time of great upheaval. “The tectonic plates of global geopolitics were changing and it was an extremely exciting time for us.”
“At the same time, even if we had been indirect witnesses, particularly in England and particularly at the university I attended, we could not have known about a movement that would, decades later, shake us from our illusions. And that would lead to the attacks of September 11th, the ones in London, Madrid, Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan and so on. Despite everything, I think there is still a lot of light in the book.”
Fate is others
Claudine Bourbonnais
Editions Quebec America
152 pages
- Claudine Bourbonnais was born in Montreal.
- She has been a journalist at Radio-Canada since 1990 and host of the Téléjournal weekend.
- His first novel, Métis Beach, was a huge success in 2014 and was translated into English.
- It earned her a prize at the Chambéry First Novel Festival in France in 2015.
- She is also the author of “Piégée,” a short story published by Ponts, a collective led by Chrystine Brouillet.
“Gilles is getting impatient. The computer needs time to boot. Finally it opens, I enter my email account and click on Paul’s message.
“Who is this criminal?”
The three FBI photos. At three different times. In the middle is the black-and-white copy of his Durham student ID, his face eaten up by large aviator sunglasses. He doesn’t wear one on the other two. His beard turned white and his features hardened. On the left, his mouth is wide open, as if he were giving a speech to a crowd. On the other hand, he is older and stronger; his gaze is icy and averted.”
– Claudine Bourbonnais, Destiny is other, Éditions QuébecAmérique
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