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Monkey Boulevard

By: Jane Hikel

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Paperback | 4 August 2023

At a Glance

Paperback
170 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.17

Paperback

RRP $26.39

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As displaced persons after World War II, the Piech Family chose not to return to their home in Poland, but continued from an army camp in Italy, to a Polish Dependents camp in England, finally immigrating to Canada. Despite the tragic losses suffered during the war, the author's parents begin life with hope in this new land. As a precocious five-year-old she adapts to living in the multi-ethnic borough of Ville Emard in Montreal.

She learns a new language, experiences prejudice, gets locked in a church, develops a life-long friendship, and spends evenings sitting with her father on the balcony observing the human traffic below their three-story tenement.

There is humor in her perspective as she observes life from the margins, tries to understand the confusing world of adults, and works on a plan to one day be fully independent.

Industry Reviews

"As displaced persons after World War II, the author's family settled in Ville Emard, a borough of Montreal where her journey as a precocious five-year-old began. At times hilarious, at times bleak, Monkey Boulevard is always historically authentic. A fine read!"

.....Dolly Dennis, author of Loddy Dah, Guernica Press, and

The Complex Arms, Dundurn Press

??"Jane Hikel was born a storyteller. Told from the perspective of an observant child and teenager who asked too many questions for the comfort of the adults in her world, Monkey Boulevard chronicles with an endearing specificity the life of her family and of the lively immigrant neighborhood in Montreal that became their home. Hikel's story--and stories--are informed by the weight of history and of her parents' survival as Polish forced laborers under the Nazi regime, setting a stage for her own sense of dislocation and her collisions with a new language, culture, and adult authority. Funny, poignant, and infused with a clear sense of place, Monkey Boulevard is an engaging and illuminating read."

...Jill Knight Weinberger, author of Vienna Voices: A Traveler Listens to the City of Dreams (Parlor Press 2006)

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