WONDER

An enthralling shell-game of a novel in which past and present, science, and emotion speak to each other, creating a brilliant whole from three
distinct parts - for fans of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Michael
Cunningham's The Hours.

On May 8, 1902, the entire city of Saint Pierre, Martinique, "the Paris of the Caribbean", was destroyed when Mount Pelée erupted. Except for one man: Baptiste Cyparis had been in a dungeon-like prison cell that morning. When he emerged, it was as if to the end of the world. Eventually, he would be known as The Man who Survived Doomsday, and become the first black man to star in Barnum & Bailey's circus. In those same years, on the other side of the Atlantic, an English mathematician and his beloved, a musician, seek to explain the hidden rules that govern the movements of the earth, and discover "Love waves." A century later in contemporary Montreal, two strangers come to know each other in a garden seeded with trees and crosses on the side of the mountain, witnessed only by a large dog and the pulsing city that surrounds them. Fortier's second novel richly displays her extraordinary literary skill, wit, and poetry, as well as her ability to weave disparate threads into a golden tapestry that surprises, delights, and begs to be re-read the moment the final page is turned. A dazzling, warm, witty voyage, Wonder confirms Fortier as both the most imaginative of storytellers and a master stylist. DOMINIQUE FORTIER's On the Proper Use of Stars, her debut novel, was published in French in Quebec in 2008 to great acclaim and many prize nominations, winning the Prix Gens de mer du Festival Étonnants Voyageurs (France). The English edition was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for translation, and is being adapted for the screen by Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria). The original French edition of this novel, Les larmes de saint Laurent, was a finalist for the Prix littéraire des collégiens. Dominique published her third novel, Le porte du ciel, in 2011. She lives in Montreal. SHEILA FISCHMAN is the award winning literary translator of well over 100 works, by such authors as Anne Hebert, Marie-Claire Blais, Pascale Quiviger, and Kim Thuy. Sheila is a Chevalier de l'ordre Nationale du Quebec and a Member of the Order of Canada. She lives in Montréal.