Jean Ethier-Blais creates a special mood in his stories. The rueful, at times melancholy observer looks at the human comedy with a Jamesian eye while his characters revolve in their inner and outer landscapes, trying to make the leap to some adventurous new plateau. This is contemporary Everyman, Everywoman and Everychild, and yet they are unique people, some of them unforgettable. The author explores a social milieu that is not usually the focus of French literature in Canada.

In 1989 Jean Ethier-Blais was awarded the Prix Athanase David, the highest literary honour bestowed by Quebec, for his contribution to French-language literature. Now retired from his post as literary critic of Le Devoir and professor of literature at McGill University, Ethier-Blais devotes most of his time to writing. He is currently president of the Centre francophone of P.E.N. Club International.

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Jane Brierley is a Montreal literary translator, writer, editor, and former president of the Literary Translators Association of Canada. Her translations of science fiction stories have appeared in a number of Tesseract's anthologies, and she has translated three of Élisabeth Vonarburg's science fiction novels: The Silent City, The Maërlande Chronicles, and Reluctant Voyagers. In 1990 she won the Governor General's Award for best English translation.

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