The Tale of Don L'Orignal - Tapa blanda

Winner of the 1979 Governor General's Award for fiction, Antonine Maillet's virtuoso creation, The Tale of Don L'Orignal, 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.

The 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.

With 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.

On day, a hay-covered island materializes offshore, an island populated by -- is it possible? -- fleas. Watched by the lighthouse keeper, the fleas take human form: the ruler, Don l'Orignal, with his moose-antler crown; his brave lieutenants; the doughty charwoman, spy, and rabble-rouser, La Sagouine; and all their friends and relations.

Antonine Maillet's provocative and entertaining fantasy pits the clever, uncouth Flea Islanders against the almost as clever but far more civilized villagers. The unexpected outcome holds up a mirror to comical, earthy, and poignant human nature as well as to Acadian history.