Alice Parizeau's publications reflect her various careers as journalist, novelist, and lawyer, as well as her preoccupation with three countries, Poland, where she was born and lived until 1945, France, where she lived and studied from 1945 to 1953, and Canada, where she has lived since 1955.

Because her experiences during her formative years were so different from those of most Canadians, it is hardly surprising that Parizeau does not fit neatly into the tradition of either Quebec or Canadian literature. Doubtless this has much to do with Parizeau's background. She was born Alice Poznanska, 25 July 1930, in Poland. Her father, Stanilaus Poznanski, was an industrialist, her mother, Bronislawa Poznanska, a concert pianist. She was, even as a seven-year-old child, involved in the Polish underground. A considerable portion of her childhood and adolescence was spent amid the horrors of wartime Europe and in the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. When liberated from the camp...