Consciously on Jamesian ground, Gallant's travelers are middle-class wannabes who look to reinvent themselves and their next generation, as they relocate with the season. The only journey she could make, in whatever direction, was away from him.ĭifficult first novel from Gallant, a novel of unsettled Americans contriving to make Europe their personal theme park after the war. She might have evaded him along another route, in drinking, or a crank religion, or playing bridge it would have been the same betrayal. He had loved her an inherent taste for exaggeration led him to believe he had worshipped her. He did not know how to bring her back, or even if he wanted to, now. She was the first author writing in English to receive this award in its 38 years of existence. On November 8, 2006, Mavis Gallant received the Prix Athanase-David from the government of her native province of Quebec. Many of Gallant’s stories had debuted in the magazine before subsequently being published in a collection.Īlthough she maintained her Canadian citizenship, Gallant continued to live in Paris, France since the 1950s. With Alice Munro, Gallant was one of a few Canadian authors whose works regularly appeared in The New Yorker.

In 2004, Gallant was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Henry Prize Stories of 2003 was dedicated to her. In 2000, she won the Matt Cohen Prize, and in 2002 the Rea Award for the Short Story. In 1989, Gallant was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1993 she was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1991 Queen’s University awarded her an honorary LL.D. In 1983-84, she returned to Canada as the University of Toronto's writer-in-residence. That same year she also received the Governor General's Award for literature for her collection of stories, Home Truths. In 1981, Gallant was honoured by her native country and made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to literature. To that end, always needing autonomy and privacy, she moved to France. She left journalism in 1950 to pursue fiction writing.

In her twenties, Gallant worked as a reporter for the Montreal Standard.

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