On the Eighth Day

by Maillet, Antonine

• ISBN13: 9780864924544
• ISBN10: 0864924542
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-01
• Publisher: Utp Distribution

Summary

?On the seventh day, God rested.? He?d had a busy week, forming the earth and everything in it and creating Adam and Eve. But a week is only a week. No wonder our world has so many loose ends. In On the Eighth Day, Antonine Maillet imagines a solution: a wider and more exuberant world created on ?the day when everything is dared and anything is possible.? She spins a tale of two brothers ? a giant carved from an oak tree and a scamp shaped out of bread dough ? who set off to seek their fortunes. Wending their way through unforgettable lands ? the Timeless Village, the Upside-Down Town, the Path of the Vicious Circle ? they make many strange friends. But wherever Life leads them, Death lurks close behind.

Table of Contents

Prologue	11	(135)
1 How two heroes emerged from the woods and a batch of bread dough	17	(16)
2 How our two heroes developed an Adam's apple, a rough voice, and three chin-hairs	33	(8)
3 How two companions became three	41	(12)
4 How three companions discovered a fourth at the centre of a vicious circle	53	(15)
5 How our four heroes discovered the universe in a drop of water	68	(18)
6 How our heroes journeyed east in search of the Occident	86	(13)
7 How the ancestor came within a hair of proving that the earth is flat	99	(11)
8 In which our four heroes learn how hard it is to get out of the woods	110	(22)
9 In which a dwarf reflects on the ecstasy and the agony of a five-legged calf	132	(14)
10 How Lent fell in August, and larks rained from the sky during a week of three Thursdays	146	(10)
11 From rain, cold weather, thunder, and wind, deliver us, O Lord	156	(18)
12 From the miseries of war, deliver us, O Lord	174	(18)
13 From famine, treachery, and sluggard kings, deliver us, O Lord	192	(35)
14 From the plague, and from all the scourges of the world, deliver us, O Lord	227	(15)
15 If the earth is round, then where is the end of the world?	242	(30)
Epilogue	272