Read an Excerpt from TOGETHER BY THE SEA by Marie-Claire Blais (Translated by Katia Grubisic)

The tenth and final instalment of the Soifs cycle comes to its close in Together by the Sea (House of Anansi Press), a novel that brings a long-running literary vision to a powerful close.

Written by Marie-Claire Blais, the book is set on an unnamed island between the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. The story focuses on Mai’s eighteenth birthday party, where a wide range of lives intersect. Among the guests are her father Daniel, a writer; the children who sing in Pastor Jeremy’s church; well-known artists and poets; refugees and former prisoners; and the trans performers from the Porte du Baiser Saloon. From this gathering, the novel expands outward, moving between scenes of political violence and fascist brutality and moments of queer community, creativity, and joy. It reflects on the events and ideologies that shaped the twentieth century and continue to shape the present.

Katia Grubisic's careful, expressive translation carries Blais’s distinctive voice, and preserves the novel’s rhythm and clarity while making its complex ideas accessible to English-language readers. Poetic yet grounded, Together by the Sea connects past and present, private lives and public histories, and offers a final, searching meditation on shared humanity.

We're very happy to share an excerpt from this brilliant conclusion to Blais' extraordinary Soifs cycle right here on Open Book!

An Excerpt from TOGETHER BY THE SEA by Marie-Claire Blais (Translated by: Katia Grubisic)

Old Uncle Isaac said, that pinkish white fur, where did those murderers come from, can you explain that, dear nephew, there are all kinds of crimes in your books, you must know that evil exists though I would rather pretend it didn’t, Daniel thought of her, Dr. Herta Oberheuser, less well-known perhaps because she was a woman, the only woman doctor at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, although she was as bloodthirsty and brutal in her experiments as the doctor of all agonies was with the children he worked on, she wasn’t as famous, she barely avoided the death penalty after her trial, she was sentenced to twenty years in prison, which was commuted for good behaviour, and she went back to practising medicine, she led a second life like other Nazi doctors who had been found guilty, she fled to northern Germany and opened up a successful practice, she thought she had been forgotten, she and her crimes, did it even matter anymore, those dour days of war were over, you had to forget everything, Daniel thought, did Dr. Oberheuser sometimes think back to her own childhood, that little girl in the school uniform, her face already hardened, her upper lip set like a blade, her blue eyes honest but too direct, her tall, pensive forehead, was that cruelty’s first face, had she recognized it in herself, when she was in solitary in prison, did that face appear to her in her dreams above her victims’ bones or was it simply the face of an ambitious child who wanted to do right, already so rigid, that rigidity would become her insatiable yoke, righteousness and rigidity, along with sadism, which shone for the glory of the party, Herta had decided very early on that she would never be like anyone else, she would have a career, she would be noticed, she would blossom, in the party that beckoned the little girls, she would be a doctor, she would study in Bonn, dermatology, she would live a man’s life, she would be respected, that little girl’s face had learned early on not to smile, that sharp upper lip, how ugly, the face seemed stern and closed, she let nothing show, no emotion especially, emotions and feelings were vulgar, they said so in the party, don’t feel anything, emotion is weakness, and she held herself upright, her face closed, upper lip like a blade, during university she understood that she would be a doctor and the party would need her, her knowledge, she would be unrivalled, what an honour for the party, it was such an extraordinary political party, the glory of her country and her race, she rejoiced when the bombs rained down, when she was hungry she vowed she would be stronger than hunger, her face grew hollow, her upper lip softened, she was almost beautiful later on, but people noticed not her beauty but her intelligence, this was war, she was hungry but she had learned not to feel anything, she was inscrutable, as heroic as the soldiers, she would have a future, a spectacular career, sometimes in the throes of hunger she wavered, and the face of the austere child she had been, the child denied and hungry, the exhaustion of her studies, that face haunted Herta Oberheuser the war criminal during the tedious hours in jail when the world had condemned her as a monster but they would forget, you could forget anything with time, there, alone, in confinement, did she see that little girl, the child whose youth had been stolen and denied by the party, the party she had adored, idolized, was it all in vain, would it always be in vain, adulation had trampled the child, the little girl whose face showed nothing, that upper lip at the time already looked like a blade, her features drawn and severe, her gaze direct and penetrating, she was born like that, she thought, she couldn’t do anything about it, if she had been able to choose her own fate everything would’ve been different, she would never have worked at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, she would never have been part of the League of German Girls, those virginal teens, a bouquet of life so quickly wilted, her sisters, her friends, though Herta was a loner, all of them devoted to their great leader, they lived only for him, if anyone had offered her a different destiny, a more banal life, though that was never what she wanted for herself, she was proud, she believes she was destined for what she called a unique experience, everything would be special for her, the signature of the infinite projected into another, less intransigent fate, she never would have met Dr. Karl Gebhardt, the camp’s head surgeon, she was his assistant, nothing that came after would have happened, her hands would have been clean, she would have lived a righteous life, a rigid life, above all she would have killed no one, it wasn’t clear how that had happened, the head surgeon imposed his will, Dr. Gebhardt said, think of our troops, we want to assess their tolerance to pain and how to ease the pain and to that end we must operate on human flesh which we have here in endless supply, know that if not for us they would all end up in smoke and ashes so what is there to lose, tell me, you’re young, you’ll learn quickly not to feel anything, about life or death, nothing, I know it’s hard to hear them moaning, crying, screaming, but then all at once there is nothing, you don’t hear them anymore, you had to yield to the coldness of the soul, Dr. Oberheuser thought, that was what it was, she would get there, bit by bit, or so the head surgeon promised, the master of fear, to feel nothing, to be nothing more than a machine, her supreme austerity loved order, cleanliness, she could go further than the other doctors,...

Together by the Sea. Copyright Marie-Claire Blais, 2026. Excerpt printed by permission of House of Anansi Press.

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Marie-Claire Blais was the internationally revered author of more than twenty-five books, many of which have been published around the world. In addition to the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, which she won four times, Blais was awarded the Gilles-Corbeil Prize, the Médicis Prize, the Molson Prize, and several Guggenheim Fellowships. Marie-Claire Blais divided her time between Florida and Quebec.

Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor, and translator. Her work has appeared in Canadian and international publications. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for translation and the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and her collection of poems What if red ran out won the Gerald Lampert award for best first book.