The Enchanted Figtree

Whether we are touched by the 2015 migrant crisis in the Mediterranean or the heated debates about the status of the (260+ million) displaced persons in our different societies, all of us have been affected by the «age of migration.» Marco Micone’s hybrid text, which through this translation will now be available to English readers, is made up of autobiographical snapshots, brief commentaries, and a short theatrical exchange. It includes the author’s own childhood experiences in Italy and his emigration as a teenager with his family to Québec. The author’s clear-sighted, often tongue-in-cheek descriptions continue to be relevant today, not least when he explores the challenges of the Canadian policy of multiculturalism and Québec’s decision to choose a different, «intercultural» model to defuse the springing up of ethnic village-like ghettos, particularly in urban centers like Montréal. His promise to the Francophone Québécois that «one hundred peoples coming from afar» would ensure that the French-speaking community could endure within the North American context, has been borne out by his own texts. The author writes with passion, with sincerity and, as literary critic Gilles Marcotte notes, with an intelligence that often helps to stretch the reader.