These twelve stories are set in Paris, Mavis Gallant’s adopted home, a city whose nuances she brings to life through a wide range of characters: squabbling writers, bewildered parents, scheming art dealers, beleaguered tenants, and feckless drifters. An artist’s widow proves more than a match for Sandor Speck, who hopes to make a name for himself with her late husband’s paintings. Literary rivals Prism and Grippes, the protégés of a rich, misguided American patron, battle across the years. And in the Magdalena stories, a man is caught in the pull of loyalties between his beautiful first wife from a marriage of political conscience, and the woman he truly loves.

Elegant, concise, and finely textured, these stories never relax the tension between detachment and compassion, understanding and mystery, memory and truth. With remarkable intelligence and an unfailing eye for the telling detail, Gallant weaves stories of intricate simplicity and spare complexity.

 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.

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“To take up residence in the mind of Mavis Gallant, as one does in reading her stories, is a privilege and a delight. . . . In the taut, high-wire literary performance in this volume, Mavis Gallant is at the top of her form.” —New York Times Book Review
“This is a splendid collection . . . to be savoured and passed around to friends who appreciate slyness and who know about the little sadnesses which scar but do not kill.” —Washington Post Book World

“Mavis Gallant’s fiction is among the finest ever written by a Canadian.” —Books in Canada

“One of the great short story writers of our time.” —Bookseller (UK)

“Mavis Gallant’s stories are so tightly constructed, their tone so wry that they need to be digested a little at a time, like a large piece of rich cake. And it’s hard to leave even a bit untasted.” —Newsday

“Each story is a gem.” —Virginia Quarterly Review

“Mavis Gallant is a master of contemporary prose and Overhead in a Balloon is a superb and triumphant collection.” —Chapel Hill Newspaper
“[An] authority of presence coupled with Gallant’s Chekhovian eye for the intricacies of personal relationships has made Overhead in a Balloon an outstanding addition to her previous books.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette