Cairo – «Gulf»:
Afaq Publishing and Distribution House released the novel “All My Little Sorrows” by Canadian writer Myriam Teves, translated by Enas Al-Turki. The novel combines imagination and elements of the writer’s biography. Where Yuli tells the events of the story regarding her sister, their family, and their upbringing in a small Canadian town, among members of a militant sect, the sect to which the writer belongs, born in 1964. She lived for a period between Montreal and London.
Fame
The novel, which was turned into a movie in 2021 and won several awards, and was first published in 2014, tells regarding “Yuli” and “Alef”, two talented sisters who are close to each other, and despite their great differences, there are many things in common between them, and “ Alef» the older sister, a professional pianist, enjoys fame, success, wealth, and beauty, and lives with a loving husband who is loyal to her, but she suffers from chronic depression, and following a failed suicide attempt, she entered the psychiatric department of the hospital.
As for Yuli, she is the younger sister, and she is a writer. She has several books for young people. She achieved medium success. She is trying to write a literary book, which she has been working on for several years. She lives a chaotic life. She has two sons, in their teens, from two failed marriages. In relationship following relationship, with men who are not right for her, she eventually finds herself responsible for her sister, who begs her to help her end her life.
“She wanted to die, but you wanted her to live, and we were enemies, loving each other.” What do you have to do, when your best sister begs you, to help her leave this world, because she finds life so painful, so unbearable? This is the background around which the events of the novel “Miriam Teves” revolve: “All My Little Sorrows”, which is characterized by irony and a sense of humor, and talks regarding love, loss and survival.
Miriam Teeves has published five novels: “My Amazing Summer of Luck – Well-bred Boy – Complicated Kindness – The Flying Trautmans – Irma Voth,” in addition to a literary work called “Low Your Ambition: A Life.” She currently lives in Toronto, and is best known for her novel “Complicated Kindness,” which Published in 2004, “All My Little Sorrows” is a multi-award winner.
tragic event
Teeves played an influential role in the film “Silent Light” in an experience that inspired her to write her fifth novel, “Irma Voth”, which was published in 2011. Her father was one of the first settlers, who settled in the Canadian city of Steinbach, following arriving there in 1874 from Ukraine.
Her first novel, “The Summer of My Amazing Luck”, was published in 1996 while she was working as a journalist, and her father committed suicide in 1998. This tragic event inspired her to write her memoirs, which received good reactions, as the book deals with mental illness in the modern era.
For much of his life, Teves’ father had bipolar disorder, but he was an elementary school teacher and fought to establish the first public library in his city. Miriam’s only sister committed suicide in 2010, 12 years following their father’s death.
The American newspaper “New York Times” chose her novel “Women Speak” as one of the 100 most important Canadian novels of 2019.
The novel “Women Speak” derives its main event from a real rape case that took place in “Bolivia” in the province of “Manitoba”; Where a strict Christian sect resides, living in isolation from the technologically advanced environment, and the different means of living and life, this group has historically suffered persecution, and it has Germanic origins.
The origins of the writer Miriam Teeves goes back to this sect, which is present in several Canadian regions, but she in turn split from that sect, and continued her studies in Montreal, and she is currently residing with her mother in Toronto, which has a multi-ethnic cultural mixture.
