Why did Nancy Huston’s Governor General’s Award raise questions about French Canadian literature?

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Canadian literature Canadian writer Alice Munro was lauded as a “master of the contemporary short story” by the Swedish Academy when it awarded her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.

In 1993, author Nancy Huston received the Governor General’s Award for the best French-language novel for her work Cantique des plaines.12

The award sparked significant controversy and raised questions regarding the definition of French Canadian literature because Huston had originally composed the novel in English under the title Plainsong before re-creating it in French. This process challenged established expectations for the category, prompting a debate about whether a work primarily conceived in English could—or should—be recognized as a contribution to French Canadian literature.12