Literary Representations of the Far North through the Lens of a Canadian-Romanian Writer: Pineapple Kisses in Iqaluit by Felicia Mihali

Abstract

    The Canadian North, close to the Arctic and the embodiment of the exotic faraway realm of ice and enigmatic inhabitants, is explored through the perspective of a Canadian writer of Romanian origin, Felicia Mihali, as depicted in her very recent novel Pineapple Kisses in Iqaluit (2021). Summarisable as the initiatic journey of a disabused French teacher in her thirties towards the happiness that she eventually finds in the least expected, most hostile environment imaginable, Iqaluit,
the seat of the most northern French school in Nunavut, the case of this novel is quite interesting, as it was written in English and subsequently translated into French by its Romanian author. Thus, the issue of the multiplicity of perspectives and the culturally filtered perception of an exotic, unfamiliar, unrelenting landscape bearing upon the evolution of the female protagonist becomes the centre of attention, providing the opportunity to assess the symbolic meaning of the descriptive passages and their role in shaping the character’s evolution. These landscapes making up the corpus under study take the most varied forms, from the wilderness to the urban area, the school environment, or the inserts referring to the polar expeditions in search of the Northern Passage, and last but not least, the Inuit folk tales.