In the stories that make up In Transit, internationally acclaimed writer Mavis Gallant describes with elegant and scrupulous precision—and with a discerning eye for telling detail—the quirks of human nature and the limits of human compassion. A host of remarkably drawn characters are surveyed with a cool wit and sophisticated intelligence as they struggle to transcend the imprisonment of their provisional lives. Sometimes direct, sometimes tantalizingly oblique, Mavis Gallant's finely textured writing demonstrates once again that she is a master of contemporary prose.

 Mavis Gallant (1922–2014) once told an interviewer that she could no more stop being Canadian than she could change the colour of her eyes. Born in Montreal, she left a career as a leading journalist in that city to move to Paris in 1950 to write.

She published stories on a regular basis in The New Yorker, many of which were anthologized. Her worldwide reputation was established by books such as From The Fifteenth District and Home Truths, which won the Governor General’s Award in 1982. In that same year she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, becoming a Companion of the Order in 1993, the year she published Across the Bridge and was the recipient of a special tribute at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors in Toronto. She received several honorary degrees from Canadian universities and remained a much sought-after public speaker.

Mavis Gallant's profile page

"Meticulously constructed. . . . Timeless and unforgettable." —Jane Urquhart

“Gallant . . . has dared to drift in a disorienting century, always trusting her own imaginative compass. Her fiction, never fooled into trying to keep up with history, will last a long time.” —New York Times Book Review

“One of the great short story writers of our time, and these three groups of stories . . . represent the extraordinary diversity of her endlessly revealing fictions. Her details are always entertaining.… Gallant is a quietly dazzling writer.” —Publishers Weekly