La Première Personne

by Pierre Turgeon

In The First Person, a disillusioned computer programmer working for the police has decided to erase his identity. We do not know why. Leaving his old life behind, the man becomes a private detective in Los Angeles under a new, forged identity. He is hired to find a local gangster's unfaithful wife, but after locating the woman, he falls in love with her. The pair plans to reunite after he returns her and collects his fee, but their plans are shortcircuited by her husband, who punishes her cruelly for her betrayals. Devastated, the detective exacts his revenge. But soon, trapped by his own manipulations, he slowly falls into a mystic quest that redefines his selfimage and world view. Written in the first person, the book explores, through the main character's eyes, his tortured mind, and depicts, with carefully chosen words, the emptiness of his existence and his lack of real emotion.The First Person has been critically praised as an account of one man's systematic destruction of his own personality.

149 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Pierre Turgeon (born 9 October 1947 in Quebec City, Canada) is a Canadian novelist and essayist from Quebec.

He was a journalist and literary critic at Perspectives and Radio-Canada. He is also a co-founder of l'Illettré with Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, Jean-Marie Poupart, Jean-Claude Germain and Michel Beaulieu. He is the author 22 books and of many screenplays, including a dramatization of the October Crisis.