May Our Joy Endure

Winner of the 2023 Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre, and Prix Ringuet

Céline Wachowski, internationally renowned architect and accidental digital-culture icon, finally unveils her plans for the Webuy Complex, her first major public project commissioned by the city of Montreal, her hometown. But instead of the triumphant celebration she anticipates in at last bringing her reputation to bear in her own city, the project is immediately excoriated by critics, who accuse the her of callously destroying the social fabric of struggling neighborhoods, ushering in a new era of gentrification, and many even deadlier sins. Caught in the turmoil between her vision for a new Montreal and the protestors whose actions grow increasingly personal, Céline must make sense of the charges against herself and the milieu in which she finds the people she believes to be her friends. For the first time in danger of losing their footing, what fictions do they tell themselves to justify their privileges, and to maintain their position in the world that they themselves have built?

A dazzling social novel set in the microcosm of the ultra privileged, May Our Joy Endure depicts with razor-sharp acuity the terrible beauty of wealth, influence, and art in the era of late capitalism.