Great reading that provides a sense of the city, from the Traveler online Ultimate Travel Library.
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St. Urbain’s Horseman, by Mordecai Richler (1971)
An evocative and dryly comic novel about Jewish identity in mid-century Plateau-Mont-Royal.
The Tin Flute (Bonheur d’Occasion), by Gabrielle Roy (1945)
Translated as “secondhand happiness,” this first novel by Quebec’s most famous woman writer tells of hardship, sacrifice, and the bonds in WWII-era working-class Montreal.
The Favourite Game, by Leonard Cohen (1963)
Coming-of-age novel set in Montreal by the city’s unofficial poet laureate.
Sacré Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec, by Taras Grescoe (2001)
An irreverent and meticulously researched travelogue about past and present Quebec culture and politics, by a Montreal-based travel writer.
City Unique: Montreal Days and Nights in the 1940s and ‘50s, by William Weintraub (1997)
Anecdotes from Montreal’s Jazz Age heydey by a journalist and memoirist who lived through it all.
The Hockey Sweater (Le Chandail de Hockey), by Roch Carrier (1979)
Classic children’s story ubiquitous to all Canadian kids of a certain age; the eponymous sweater is pictured on the Canadian five-dollar bill.
The Story of French, by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow (2006)
Exhaustive and readable work of cultural anthropology about French culture in Montreal and elsewhere, by bilingual Montreal writers.
