It's an ordinary summer in the twenty-first century. There's a heat wave in Rome, where the poet has just set down her valises. What is she seeking amid the crowds of tourists, she, Italian-born, exiled to America, who speaks the language only haltingly? In the capital's streets, at the railroad station or the museum, an exuberant city life rubs shoulders with a thousand tragedies. Rome is a theatre of recurrent violence, the cinema where you are seated, apprehensive, watching The Double Feature of the Murdered Woman. For six months the poet wanders the city, alert to the phantoms passing by. This book could be the written record of her conversations with ghosts. It's a return to the crime scene, a renewal of vows, face to face with a haunting past: that of Italy, and the blood drenched story of women. (From Guernica Editions)

Carole David received the Prix Alain-Grandbois in 2011 for her collection Manuel de poétique à l'intention des jeunes filles; the same collection was also included on the shortlist for the Governor General's poetry award. In 2020, she was named the recipient of Quebec's Prix Athanase-David for lifetime achievement in literature.

Donald Winkler is a Montreal-based translator. He has won the Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English translation for The Lyric Generation: The Life and Times of the Baby-Boomers by François Ricard, Partitia for Glenn Gould by Georges Leroux and The Major Verbs by Pierre Nepveu. Two books translated by him have been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize: A Secret Between Us by Daniel Poliquin in 2007 and Arvida by Samuel Archibald.