Black Robe
With an Introduction by Colm Tóibín
"Moore is at the height of his considerable powers as a narrator."
—Colm Tóibín
Black Robe is the powerful tale of a Jesuit missionary's struggles with the fierce natives of an unforgiving land—and with the heavy burden of his own unforgiving conscience. Set in seventeenth-century Canada—an untamed country claimed by the French, controlled by the Jesuits, but belonging to the natives—Father Laforgue sets out on his mission sustained by his faith and his dreams of martyrdom. He is severely tested by the demands of the wilderness, his encroaching deafness, and the temptations of the flesh, but, ultimately, his is a story of survival and triumph. Black Robe is a tale of adventure and defiance, faith and betrayal, passion and perversity. And, above all, it is a tale of the survival of the human spirit.
Welcome...
For a young country, Canada has produced writers who are celebrated around the world, and it is only fitting that the work of the greatest of these—Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Timothy Findley, and Mordecai Richler—form part of our launch list. To make these classics even more special, we asked some of the world's finest novelists to introduce them to a new generation of readers. The writers who will introduce Penguin Canada's Classics include David Bezmozgis, A.S. Byatt, Richard Ford, Wayne Johnston, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Alberto Manguel, Lorrie Moore, Annie Proulx, David Adams Richards, Jane Smiley, Guy Vanderhaege and M.G. Vassanji.
Great literature never loses its relevance, and we hope these new editions of Canada's best-loved books will attract a new general readership and also be of use to those in schools, colleges, and universities in this country and elsewhere.
David Davidar, Publisher, Penguin Group (Canada)
