The Town Below changed the face ofQuebecoisliterature.

The Town Below takes place in St. Joseph Parish of Quebec City's Saint-Sauveur suburb. Saint-Sauveur is a parochial and provincial place where narrow piety and corruption can be found in every corner, and Denis and Lise, two adolescents in love, scandalize the town with their affair. Scheming politicians and clergymen and grasping social climbers mix with salt-of-the-earth citizens in a rough-and-tumble satiric assault on pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec mores and attitudes.

The Town Belowwon the Prix David andthe Prix de la langue francaise. Lemelin was also awarded Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships. A bestseller in Quebec when it originally appeared,The Town Belowhas been called the "pioneer novel of working-class Quebec" and exploded, with great controversy, the smothering social and religious strictures prevalent among postwar Quebecois.The novel was first published in English by Reynal & Hitchcock in 1948.