Querelle of Roberval

By: Kevin Lambert, Donald Winkler - translator

Narrated by: Nicolas Van Burek

Length: 6 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

Shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize

Homage to Jean Genet’s antihero and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of the Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.

As a millworkers’ strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions start to escalate between the workers—but when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. Strapping and unabashed, likeable but callow, by day he walks the picket lines and at night moves like a mythic Adonis through the ranks of young men who flock to his apartment for sex. As the dispute hardens and both sides refuse to yield, sand stalls the gears of the economic machine and the tinderbox of class struggle and entitlement ignites in a firestorm of passions carnal and violent. Trenchant social drama, a tribute to Jean Genet’s antihero, and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of France’s Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.

©2022 Kevin Lambert (P)2023 International Translation Series

Critic reviews

“It has finally arrived: the erotic Québécois novel about labor conflict that we’ve all been waiting for ... The book is written in an icy style. Try to find a surplus adjective—I dare you. It is not for the squeamish but (or rather, and) is easily one of the best novels I’ve read this year.”—Molly Young, New York Times

“Kevin Lambert’s fearless novel is a profane, funny, bleak, touching, playful, and outrageous satire of sexual politics, labour, and capitalism. In ecstatic and cutting prose, it gleefully illuminates both the broad socio-political tensions of life in a Quebec company town and the intimate details of sex, lust, loneliness, and gay relationships in such a place. Like its central character, the book is brash, beautiful, quasi-mythic, and tragic. Most improbably, for all its daring and provocation, Querelle of Roberval is lyrically, even tenderly written.”—Judge’s citation for the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

“Lambert’s excavation into the depths of desire and provocation is as thrilling as it is disturbing, as beautiful as it is revolting. This is a difficult balance to manage, yet it may well be the key to his success.”—Literary Review of Canada

The sex and later on the violence

I’m glad I read it but I’m not sure it really made sense to me. Maybe the violence is essentially operatic and it’s stupid to ask for it to make sense. And maybe I need to read Genet’s Querelle of Brest for proper context. I enjoyed the full and erotic descriptions of Querelle’s sexual encounters and of his beauty. But in the end I felt his sexuality didn’t really connect with the narrative. At one point the fathers try to get him but that doesn’t go anywhere and we never come back to it.

Hold onto your butts!

I was first made aware of Querelle the movie based on the book by Genet.

So it’s safe to say this tale isn’t out to set up a happy fairytale ending.

It was operatic though, fantastical and erotic and painful.

There’s clearly some historical precedents shared along the way, the story mostly feels true to life. And while it’s not an outright edification of the LGBTQ community, it does speak of the wonder and loss our family has lived through.

This was wild!