Book cover for Dear Chekhov by Michel Tremblay

Dear Chekhov

2026 Released
Ebook Available November 17, 2026
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Available November 17, 2026
Hardback Unavailable
TalonbooksISBN 9781772016352
Translated by Linda Gaboriau

A table set outside in beautiful fall weather. A turkey roasting in the oven. Everything seems set for a festive family dinner – except that the playwright wants to rewrite his play. In Dear Chekhov, the renowned Michel Tremblay (re)examines an old unfinished script, a tribute to the legendary author of The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull. Will the play stand up in performance? The question obsesses the narrator, Tremblay’s alter ego Jean-Marc. And then there is Benoit, the author-brother, who settles his accounts with a detestable young critic, the current flame of their sister. This Great Actress has given her career a boost by working with a trendy millennial director, trashing Chekhov (and their mother’s memory) in the process. Dear Chekhov presents Michel Tremblay in total control of his art, holding a mirror up to the theatre in an irresistible “Chekhovian reflection of what we are.”

Cast of 3 women and 5 men

Michel Tremblay

A major figure in Québec literature, Michel Tremblay has built an impressive body of work as a playwright, novelist, translator, and screenwriter. To date Tremblay's complete works include thirty plays, thirty-one novels, eight collections of autobiographical stories, a collection of tales, seven screenplays, forty-seven trans¬lations and adaptations of works by foreign writers, ten plays and fifteen stories printed in diverse publications, an opera libretto, a song cycle, a Symphonic Christmas Tale, and two musicals. His plays have been published and translated into forty-three languages and have garnered critical acclaim in Canada, the United States, and more than fifty countries around the world.

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Linda Gaboriau

Translated by

Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montréal. Her translations of plays by Québec's most prominent playwrights have been published and produced across Canada and abroad. In her work as a literary manager and dramaturge, she has directed numerous translation residencies and international exchange projects. She is the founding -director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Gaboriau has won the Governor General's Award for Translation three times: in 1996 for Daniel Danis's Stone and Ashes, in 2010 for Wajdi Mouawad's Forests, and in 2019 for Wajdi Mouawad's Birds of a Kind. She is a member of the Order of Canada and an Officer of the Ordre national du Québec.

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