Kukum

Finalist, Governor General's Literary Award in the Translation Category
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.

SUSAN OURIOU is an award-winning fiction writer and literary translator with over sixty translations and co-translations of fiction, non-fiction, children's and young-adult literature to her credit. She has won the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation. Jane, the Fox and Me, co-translated with Christelle Morelli, was named to IBBY's Honour List. She has also published Nathan, a novel for young readers. Susan lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Michel Jean is an award-winning writer, news anchor and investigative journalist, much appreciated by the Quebec public. After graduating, he worked at Radio-Canada and, since 2005, at TVA. He has written twelve books with sales of nearly 475,000 copies in Quebec. In addition to participating in several collectives, he has edited two short story collections featuring Indigenous voices: Amun, released in fall 2016, and Wapke, published in May 2021, both of which have been sold in English (Exile Editions) and German (Wieser Verlag). In his book Atuk, elle et nous, reissued in 2021, he talks for the first time about his native roots. Released in Quebec in 2019 and in France in 2020, Kukum, a tribute to his great-grandmother, was the best-selling novel in Quebec in 2021 and second in 2020. Qimmik was the best-selling Quebec novel in Quebec in 2023.

Michel Jean is Innu from Mashteuiatsh, and his native origins resonate in many of his writings.