Kukum
About this ebook
Longlist, 2025 Dublin Literary Award
A Quebec bestseller based on the life of Michel Jean’s great-grandmother that delivers an empathetic portrait of drastic change in an Innu community.
Kukum recounts the story of Almanda Siméon, an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, who falls in love with a young Innu man despite their cultural differences and goes on to share her life with the Pekuakami Innu community. They accept her as one of their own: Almanda learns their language, how to live a nomadic existence, and begins to break down the barriers imposed on Indigenous women. Unfolding over the course of a century, the novel details the end of traditional ways of life for the Innu, as Almanda and her family face the loss of their land and confinement to reserves, and the enduring violence of residential schools.
Kukum intimately expresses the importance of Innu ancestral values and the need for freedom nomadic peoples feel to this day.
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About the author
MICHEL JEAN is an award-winning writer, and former news anchor and investigative journalist, much appreciated by the Quebec public. He worked at Radio-Canada and the Quebec television network TVA before devoting himself full-time to his writing. He has published over a dozen books including his bestselling novels Kukum, an exploration of his Innu roots and winner of the Prix France-Québec, and Qimmik, which deals with a harrowing chapter of Inuit history. His work has been translated into several languages. his most recent novel being Kabasa. Michel Jean has also edited two short story collections featuring Indigenous voices: Amun, released in fall 2016, and Wapke, published in May 2021, both of which are available in English. Michel Jean is Innu from Mashteuiatsh, and his native origins resonate in many of his writings.
SUSAN OURIOU is an award-winning fiction writer and literary translator with over seventy translations and co-translations of fiction, non-fiction, children’s and young-adult literature to her credit. She has received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation and, in 2024, her translation of Catherine Leroux's The Future won CBC's Canada Reads. Her translations have also been long-listed for awards such as the International Dublin Literary Award, the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the Giller Prize. as well as appearing on IBBY’s Honor List. She has also published Nathan, a novel for young readers, and Damselfish, short-listed for the WGA's Georges Bugnet award for fiction.
