Mavis Gallant is a contemporary legend, a frequent contributor to the New Yorker for close to fifty years, and the undisputed master of the short story. Her peerless prose captures the range of human experience while evoking time and place with unequaled skill. This superb collection of fifteen of Gallant's stories, edited and with an introduction by bestselling author Michael Ondaatje, gathers the best of her many stories set all over Europe, all written in Paris where she has long lived.

Mysterious, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, these are tales of expatriates and exiles, wise children and straying saints. Together they compose a secret history, at once intimate and panoramic, of modern times.

Besides an introduction by Michael Ondaatje, this book includes the following stories:

"The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street""Irina""The Latehomecomer""In Transit""The Moslem Wife""From the Fifteenth District""Speck's Idea""Baum, Gabriel, 1935-( )""The Remission""Grippes and Poches""Forain""August""Mlle. Dias de Corta""In Plain Sight""Scarves, Beads, Sandals"Afterword: About the Stories, by Mavis Gallant