Mais cette superposition de l'atlas et d'une biographiene va pas ici sans risque.- Jean Ricardou1When thinking of quintessential literary genres of the late twentieth century, arguably none is more typically than the Nouveau Roman, which proved nothing short of revolutionary in terms of redefining literary narrative. The generic counterpart (or at least one of them) in the American sphere of influence at this time, the road novel, typified by Jack Kerouac's On the Road, showcased rebelliousness and the escape from strictures, not so much in its form as through its characters and storylines.2 Both genres are iconic, but they are also distinct, as distant from one another as France is from the sprawling expanses of the American heartland that are traversed by ribbons of asphalt.To read Sal Paradise, one of On the Road's protagonists, as the auto-biographical embodiment of Kerouac's outsider ethnicity as a French Canadian in America nonetheless justifies the place of the road novel in a French-speaking literary imaginary.3 From the tales of the coureurs des bois, adventurers who took to the road (or more accurately the inland waterways that formed the fur trader's highway), to twentieth- and twenty-first-century imitations of Kerouac's own work, most famously Jacques Poulain's Volkswagen Blues, the open expanses of the North American space and a means to travel have beckoned adventurers and authors alike to the escapist possibilities of the road.4 Although written in French, French-Canadian and Quebecois road novels typically owe a great deal to their American counterparts given the impact of similar geography and commonalities in settlement patterns. Moreover, the crossover is indicative of the permeation of many things fashionably American into the larger cultural ethos of Quebec.In Marc Seguin's La foi du braconnier, a road novel that owes much to both On the Road and Volkswagen Blues, there is something distinctly - and generically - French about what is ostensibly an American (in the continental sense of the term) road novel.5 Insofar as it breaks with the conventions of the typical road novel, which aims to chronicle a purposeful journey, often pushing westward across the continent, Seguin's discontinuous narrative of seemingly erratic zigzagging recalls the breaks with novelistic convention initiated by the Nouveau Roman. As a Nouveau Roman de la route, perhaps one inspired as much by On the Road as by Michel Butor's Mobile, it is a hybrid genre befitting a society that often, in a slightly abbreviated version of Marcel's Rioux's iconic formulation, sums itself up using the mathematically derived equation of americanite + francite = quebecite.6Getting one's bearingsSeguin's debut novel is the story of Marc S. Morris, a young man of mixed white and Mohawk heritage. Despite the linguistic legacy of the Mohawk nation's former British alliances, Morris seems equally at home in his indigenous mother tongue as he is in French, but demonstrates a certain unease with the dominant language of the North American continent. His mixed percentage is a clear reference to the metissage that first took place centuries ago between European fur traders and the native peoples in North America, a fact that causes Morris to regard himself as une consequence de l'Amerique moderne.7 He, however, is more of an assembled character, harkening back to Deleuze and Guattari, than a metis or hybrid one.8 His multiplicity of personas, each of which makes for a fascinating story in its own right, combine to make him a particularly indecipherable character. He is a not-fully-trained chef (he completed only one year of culinary school) but is an accomplished cook with a talent for preparing game with technique-driven style. He is the single-handed thwarter of Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist plots but shows little respect for the law, having been, as if playing to a blatantly racist stereotype, a smuggler of cigarettes. …