Irma Voth a novel
This novel follows a young Mennonite woman, vulnerable yet wise beyond her years, who carries a terrible family secret with her on a remarkable journey to survival and redemption. Nineteen-year-old Irma lives in a rural Mennonite community in Mexico. She has already been cast out of her family for m...
| Main Author: | Toews, Miriam, 1964- |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
HarperCollins,
2011.
|
| Edition: | 1st U.S. ed. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
This novel follows a young Mennonite woman, vulnerable yet wise beyond her years, who carries a terrible family secret with her on a remarkable journey to survival and redemption. Nineteen-year-old Irma lives in a rural Mennonite community in Mexico. She has already been cast out of her family for marrying a young Mexican ne'er-do-well she barely knows, although she remains close to her rebellious younger sister and yearns for the lost intimacy with her mother. With a husband who proves elusive and often absent, a punishing father, and a faith in God damaged beyond repair, Irma appears trapped in an untenable and desperate situation. When a celebrated Mexican filmmaker and his crew arrive from Mexico City to make a movie about the insular community in which she was raised, Irma is immediately drawn to the outsiders and is soon hired as a translator on the set. But her father, intractable and domineering, is determined to destroy the film and get rid of the interlopers. His action sets Irma on an irrevocable path toward something that feels like freedom. This is the powerful story of a young woman's quest to discover all that she may become in the unexpectedly rich and confounding world that lies beyond the stifling, observant community she knows. |
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| Physical Description: |
255 p. ; 22 cm. |
| ISBN: |
9780062070180 (hbk.) 0062070185 (hbk.) |
| Author Notes: |
Miriam Toews was born in 1964 in Canada. She is best known for her novels A Complicated Kindness and All My Puny Sorrows. She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for body of work. She is also a two-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Toews had a leading role in the feature film Silent Light, written and directed by Mexican filmmaker, Carlos Reygadas and winner of the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize, an experience that influenced her fifth novel, Irma Voth. (Bowker Author Biography) |