For Jacques Poulin, in this miniature masterpiece of tenderness and humor, translation is more than the passage from language to language, it is the essence of our human condition: giving and taking, teaching and learning, experiencing and sharing experience, a love affair with our fellow human beings.
–Alberto Manguel One of my favorite writers in the world is Jacques Poulin.
–Rawi Hage One of the finest and most underrated novelists in Québec.
–The Globe & Mail We fall under the spell of this heartwarming, human novel, penned by Jacques Poulin at the summit of his art.
–Mieux Vivre If familiarity and surprise have become the trademark of Poulin's novels, it is evident that Translation Is a Love Affair does not deviate from this model; and Poulin's reader continues to read it as if he / she would pay a visit to relatives, as much to reoccupy a familiar world as to discover that which is new.
–Canadian Literature ... these sentences that have been stripped, pumiced and polished until only the beauty of the grain remains, the fine drawing of time and patience.... 'Language is the house of being, ' says Jack Waterman, alter ego of Jacques Poulin, quoting Heidegger. This house that Jacques Poulin fixes up and decorates, book by book, is a refuge where it is nice to come warm up.
–Entre les lignes Translation is a love story? Absolutely, just as that of readers with Jacques Poulin's novels. This one will not disappoint them.
–Trouver le traducteur en nous
Jacques Poulin's writing is always a fortuitous encounter. With each new book, the little melody created by Poulin refines the hypersensitivity of his literary project. This new novel that he offers, short and dense, once again shows that the pleasure of storytelling, entirely feline, is for him a poetics of writing itself. Here is an irresistible book that fans of Jacques Poulin's will read with delight, written with heart and passion and carried by suppressed emotion, touching and sincere.
–LÉMEAC: Communiqué A novel of carefully weighed words... it speaks to Poulin's talents that he can present what is, in its outlines, such a cloying plot without putting off the reader.
– The Complete Review
