Going Ashore Paperback by Mavis Gallant

Product Details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (2010-04-06)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 376 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780771035302
• Item Weight: 340.2 grams
• Dimensions: 20.35 x 13.21 x 1.78 cm

One of the world’s great short story writers emerges with a selection of stories from her past, a trove of hidden treasures.

Mavis Gallant moved from Montreal to Paris in 1950 to write short stories for a living. Since then she has continued to write, producing a remarkable body of work. In 1993, Robertson Davies said, “She has written many short stories. My calculation suggests that she has written in this form at least the equivalent of twenty novels.”

Many of her stories have been anthologized, notably in the 1996 classic Selected Stories, from which hundreds of pages had to be cut for reasons of length.

These “embarrassment of riches” are restored in this collection, along with many other neglected treasures from her past. Arranged in the order in which they appeared, they shed light on people living through most of the second half of the twentieth century.

More important, they show one of the greatest short story writers of our time at work, delineating a series of worlds with dramatic flair, dazzlingly precise language, a wicked wit, and a vivid understanding of the human condition.

About the Author

MAVIS GALLANT was born in Quebec, Canada, in 1922. She began her career as a journalist, before switching to fiction in 1950. She moved to Paris a decade later, and spent the rest of her life there. She published 116 stories in The New Yorker over the course of her career; additionally, she wrote two novels, a play, and a collection of essays. A recipient of the 2002 Rea Award for the Short Story, Gallant was also awarded the 2004 PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement and the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction. She was named Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981, and in 1993 she was promoted to Companion of the Order. She died in 2014.