A foreign country

"A young man comes of age in Montreal's Greek community, where he discovers the world of literature. Determined to escape the common fate of immigrant children, he leaves to pursue a doctorate. But the tragic pull of his family - his mother's mental deterioration, his father's physical decay - conspire against his hopes. He ends up running and living above the family business: precisely the fate he'd hoped to avoid. A vivid depiction of Montreal's Mile End in the seventies and eighties, by which time Greeks and Italians had replaced the Jewish community of Mordecai Richler's era."--