BOSCO, MONIQUE

BOSCO, MONIQUE (1927– ), Canadian writer. Bosco was born in Vienna and spent her childhood in France, where she was educated. She immigrated to Canada in 1948 and attended the Université de Montréal where she obtained her Ph.D. in 1953, with a thesis on the theme of isolation in the French-Canadian novel. After working for many years as a freelance   journalist for Canada's francophone public broadcasting network and for a number of newspapers and magazines, she obtained a position in 1963 at the French Studies Department of the Université de Montréal. Her first novel, entitled Un amour maladroit, published in Paris in 1961, won the First Novel Award in the United States. In 1971 her novel, La femme de Loth, won the Governor General's Award in Canada and was translated in 1975 by John Glassco as Lot's Wife. It is the story of a mature woman who reminisces about the trajectory of her life at the moment when she finds herself suddenly abandoned by her lover and in a mood of despair. Bosco has published ten other novels, all dealing with the uprooting of emigration, feminine isolation, and the bitterness of existence. She is also the author of four short-story collections and books of poetry. Bosco was awarded the Athanase-David prize in 1996 in recognition for her life's work. (Pierre Anctil (2nd ed.)