That Jacques Poulin’s lovely and obscure 1978 Canadian novel “Spring Tides” has suddenly, after 30 years, arrived in America becomes less surprising when you learn that the publisher is the Brooklyn-based boutique press Archipelago Books. These, after all, are the folks who ushered Witold Gombrowicz’s extraordinary collection “Bacacay” into English (from Polish) after nearly 50 years. Since 2003 or so, they’ve been finding untranslated masterpieces and curiosities, binding them handsomely, and making them available to a mostly unaware American readership. Get aware, reader. Mr. Poulin’s “Spring Tides” is another strange pleasure.

“Spring Tides” concerns a comic strip translator who is known only by his nickname, Teddy Bear, which derives from “T.D.B.,” or “Traducteur de Bandes Desinées.” The eccentric owner of the Quebec newspaper where Teddy works has taken an odd interest in Teddy’s spiritual well-being — “Apparently you’re a ‘socioaffective’ … I don’t know exactly what that means, but I’ve got a question for you: what can I do to make you happy?” — and offered to let him live and work in solitude on a forested island, Ile Madame.