Tremblay's novel of pure fantasy, La Cité dans l'oeuf, came out in 1968, the same year as Les Belles-Soeurs—a fact that illustrates perfecty the dual aspect of his opus: naturalism and fantasy, materialism and spiritualism, immanence and transcendence. Other works of fantasy include a collection of short stories, Contes pour buveurs attardés, and the plays Les Paons and Les Socles. As opposed to the stark naturalism of the two worlds described earlier, Tremblay's fantasy world is a place of dreams, where the laws of time and space are suspended. It is, nevertheless, a self-contained universe having certain recognizable and recurring features: the mysterious land of Paganka, starting point of the journey towards the Great Beyond; idols who come to life; fallen gods, and men who achieve divine status through the initiation ritual of crime. The underlying theme of the fantasies is a desire to break through the...