Grand Prix du livre de Montréal: 2025 edition
Discover the 5 works selected as finalists by the jury for this year’s Grand Prix du livre de Montréal. See if you can predict which will take top honours.
Find inspiration in the readings that captured the jury members’ hearts and minds. These works are available at your local library or in digital format. Reserve your copy today.
The 5 books that were selected as finalists:
The jury singled out the following books:
Awards, by Maxime Brillon, Les Herbes rouges
Jury’s comment
“A theatrical work of singular brilliance, at once satire on the business world and ceremony of chaos. Maxime Brillon invents a rich, comical and desperate stage language that pushes back the limits of theatre as well as those of language itself.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: Katya Konioukhova
Les traits difficiles, by Evelyne de la Chenelière, Les Herbes rouges
Jury’s comment
“Souls are laid bare under Évelyne de la Chenelière’s all-but indecent gaze. Each story finds the faultline, the restrained impulse, the trembling before the fall. Immense humanity meets a vision marked by hypnotic precision: A towering work of mastery and grace.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: Katya Konioukhova
The Capital of Dreams, by Heather O'Neill, HarperCollins Canada
Jury’s comment
“A luminous and cruel fable about dreams and survival. Novelist Heather O’Neill constructs a world of illusions shot through with rare political clarity. Each page reconciles pain with magic and childhood with disillusion in a language tinged with untethered grace.”
Photo credit: Julie Artacho
Soleil d'abandon, by Mathieu Rolland, Les Éditions du Boréal
Jury’s comment
“A multiple-perspective novel of great restraint, where loss and beauty clash without pathos. Mathieu Rolland captures the vital impulse that subsists in pain, with hard-edged writing and an economy of words that gives rise to poetry.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: François Couture
Un carré de poussière, Olivia Tapiero, Les Éditions de la rue Dorion
Jury’s comment
“The poetry of revelation and disclosure, where each verb is embodied and laid bare. Olivia Tapiero lets out a contained cry, at once lucid and necessary, through writing that comes to terms with anger and transforms it into thought, reminding us of literature’s chief vocation—to make the human experience visible.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: Clara Houeix
Jury selection
In addition to the finalists, the following 5 books were included in the jury selection:
Une histoire silencieuse, by Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre, La Peuplade
Jury’s comment
“A story about listening and kinship in which the author resurrects the memory of a forgotten woman. Drawing on fragments and accounts, Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre creates a space for a true and vibrant discourse, with unspoken political and poetic power.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: Laurence Perreault-Brière
Voyage à la villa du jardin secret, by J. P. Chabot, Le Quartanier
Jury’s comment
“A hybrid text, between novel and essay, on friendship, vulnerability and care. J.P. Chabot pairs intellectual rigour with tenderness, exploring the fragility of bodies and relationships through writing that is clear, ethical and profoundly human.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: Justine Latour, © Le Quartanier
Veuve Chose, by Michael Delisle, Les Éditions du Boréal
Jury’s comment
“In a nameless totalitarian regime, Michael Delisle orchestrates an intimate resistance with finely honed precision. His diction, at once sober and vibrant, explores the shadowy space between justice and desire in this dark human tale of stubborn subsistence.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: Julien Faugère
Vueltas. Affects diasporiques, by Nicholas Dawson, Éditions Nota bene
Jury’s comment
“A moving fresco where the interplay between memory, exile and kinship finds expression in a labyrinth of echoes and mirrors. Nicolas Dawson spans the space between language and injury to reconstitute a shattered identity in a work of astonishing richness and sincerity.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: Justine Latour
Mourir de froid, c'est beau, c'est long, c'est délicieux, by Nathalie Plaat, Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal
Jury’s comment
“An essay of rare emotional transparency, where love embraces madness. Nathalie Plaat revisits the foundational passion of her clinical vocation through writing that is restrained yet distressed, the fragile music of memory its constant throughline.”
Reserve (in French)
Photo credit: Annick Sauvé
Jury
The jury for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal is representative of the various sectors within the publishing industry and of Montréal’s contemporary literary and intellectual currents.
Writer, journalist and radio personality Stanley Péan was born in Port-au-Prince and raised in Jonquière (Saguenay). The author of some 30 books in various genres, including a recent collection of short stories entitled “La Pénombre propice”, he serves as chair of the board of directors of the Festival international de la littérature and sits on the boards of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal and the magazine ”Lettres québécoises”.
Photo credit: Portrait of the author by Sophie Lemaire
Oana Avasilichioaei is a poet, sound artist, performer and translator. She has written 7 hybrid collections of poetry, including ”Chambersonic”, published by Talonbooks, and ”Huit pistes”, published by Édition Le Noroît.
Photo credit: Oana Avasilichioaei
Jeannot Clair is a translator, literary consultant and critic. He translated ”Jungle” by Eugene Marten and ”La fractale Baudelaire” by Lisa Robertson, and he is the host of the podcast ”Hiatus”.
Photo credit: Juli Delporte
Jan J. Dominique weas born in Port-au-Prince but has called Montréal home since 2003. She worked and was published in her native Haiti. Now retired, she continues to write. Her novel ”Tu nous manques” was published by Éditions Remue-ménage in 2024.
Photo credit: Chloé Charbonnier
Lifelong reader and bookseller since 1997, Josiane Létourneau currently works at the Paulines bookstore on Rue Masson in Montréal.
Akos Verboczy is the author of the novel ”La maison de mon père”, published in Québec by Éditions du Boréal in 2023 and in France by Le bruit du monde in 2024. He also authored the novel ”Rhapsodie québécoise”, published by Éditions du Boréal in 2016.
Photo credit: François Couture
The winning book will be announced on December 10.
Quick search
Need help?
Contact us if you have questions.