<DIV><p>First published in 1987, Nicole Brossard's classic novel returns to Coach House in a new edition. A seminal text in Canadian and feminist literature, <I>Mauve Desert</I> is a must-read for readers and writers alike.</p><p>This is both a single novel and three separate novels in one. In the first, <I>Mauve Desert</I>, fifteen-year-old Mélanie drives across the Arizona desert in a white Meteor chasing fear and desire, cutting loose from her mother and her mother's lover, Lorna, in their roadside Mauve Motel. In the second book, Maudes Laures reads <I>Mauve Desert</I>, becomes obsessed with it, and embarks on an extraordinary quest for its mysterious author, characters and meaning. The third book ? <I>Mauve, the horizon</I> ? is Laures's eventual translation of Mauve Desert. Like all good translations, it is both the same and revealingly different from the original.</p><p>Nicole Brossard's writing is agile and inventive; from moment to moment gripping, exhilarating and erotic. Her language drifts and swells like sand dunes in a desert, cresting and accumulating into a landscape that shifts like wind and words; she translates the practice of translation, the pulse of desire.</p></DIV>