{"product_id":"9780864924193","title":"The Tale of Don L'Orignal","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinner of the 1979 Governor General's Award for fiction, Antonine Maillet's virtuoso creation, \u003ci\u003eThe Tale of Don L'Orignal\u003c\/i\u003e, is now back in print. Maillet's tale begins one day, not so very long ago but back in the youth of the world, when a hay-covered island materialized off shore, an island populated by fleas who soon took human form. The leader of this uncouth crew of have-nots, Don l'Orignal, wore a moose-antler crown as his badge of office. At his right hand were his brave lieutenants: his son, Noume, and his general, Michel-Archange. The general's wife, the doughty charwoman, spy, and rabble-rouser La Sagouine, had one finger in every pie and one raised to her neighbour, La Sainte.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe Flea Islanders were constantly at odds with the almost as clever but far more civilized upper crust of the mainland village: the mayoress, the schoolteacher, the merchant, the banker. When they invaded and tried to steal a keg of molasses, the outcome of the mock-heroic battle was unclear, except that La Sainte's son, the hapless young Citrouille, and Adeline, the merchant's lovely daughter, had fallen in love.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWith the insider's accumulation of oral history, gossip, and shrewd hindsight, Antonine Maillet has conjured up a fictional Acadia that her ancestors would relish. Perhaps those who could read it would have even understood it: she wrote Don l'Orignal in a version of 16th-century domestic French that she adapted for modern readers. In this far-fetched, but always entertaining fable, Maillet holds up a mirror to Acadian history and to an all too fallible human nature.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Goose Lane Editions","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":65420095095133,"sku":null,"price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1041\/3893\/2573\/files\/9780864924193.jpg?v=1789730506","url":"https:\/\/shop.gazellebookservices.co.uk\/products\/9780864924193","provider":"Gazelle Book Services","version":"1.0","type":"link"}