What do you think?
Rate this book
The Moslem Wife and Other Stories
Internationally celebrated as among the finest stories written in English today, Mavis Gallant's fiction offers a penetrating and powerful vision of contemporary human relationships in Europe and North America.
The Moslem Wife and Other Stories brings together eleven of Gallant's best stories from over three decades. These embody the beauty, irony, and compassion of a master writer's fictional universe. Amid the complex perceptions of the past that haunt her characters, Gallant deploys her sharp comic eye to superb in the figures who move through her stories, we catch troubling, fleeting glimpses of our own lives.
Selected and with an afterword by Mordecai Richler.
From the eBook edition.
The Moslem Wife and Other Stories brings together eleven of Gallant's best stories from over three decades. These embody the beauty, irony, and compassion of a master writer's fictional universe. Amid the complex perceptions of the past that haunt her characters, Gallant deploys her sharp comic eye to superb in the figures who move through her stories, we catch troubling, fleeting glimpses of our own lives.
Selected and with an afterword by Mordecai Richler.
From the eBook edition.
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
3 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
About the author
Mavis Gallant
89 books257 followersCanadian journalist and fiction writer. In her twenties, Gallant worked as a reporter for the Montreal Standard. She left journalism in 1950 to pursue fiction writing. To that end, always needing autonomy and privacy, she moved to France.
In 1981, Gallant was honoured by her native country and made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to literature. That same year she also received the Governor General's Award for literature for her collection of stories, Home Truths. In 1983-84, she returned to Canada as the University of Toronto's writer-in-residence. In 1991 Queen’s University awarded her an honorary LL.D. In 1993 she was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada.
In 1989, Gallant was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, she won the Matt Cohen Prize, and in 2002 the Rea Award for the Short Story. The O. Henry Prize Stories of 2003 was dedicated to her. In 2004, Gallant was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship.
With Alice Munro, Gallant was one of a few Canadian authors whose works regularly appeared in The New Yorker. Many of Gallant’s stories had debuted in the magazine before subsequently being published in a collection.
Although she maintained her Canadian citizenship, Gallant continued to live in Paris, France since the 1950s.
On November 8, 2006, Mavis Gallant received the Prix Athanase-David from the government of her native province of Quebec. She was the first author writing in English to receive this award in its 38 years of existence.
In 1981, Gallant was honoured by her native country and made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to literature. That same year she also received the Governor General's Award for literature for her collection of stories, Home Truths. In 1983-84, she returned to Canada as the University of Toronto's writer-in-residence. In 1991 Queen’s University awarded her an honorary LL.D. In 1993 she was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada.
In 1989, Gallant was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, she won the Matt Cohen Prize, and in 2002 the Rea Award for the Short Story. The O. Henry Prize Stories of 2003 was dedicated to her. In 2004, Gallant was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship.
With Alice Munro, Gallant was one of a few Canadian authors whose works regularly appeared in The New Yorker. Many of Gallant’s stories had debuted in the magazine before subsequently being published in a collection.
Although she maintained her Canadian citizenship, Gallant continued to live in Paris, France since the 1950s.
On November 8, 2006, Mavis Gallant received the Prix Athanase-David from the government of her native province of Quebec. She was the first author writing in English to receive this award in its 38 years of existence.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 17, 2021
Definitely a Canadian genius, such finely detailed, understated portraits of people and places. I feel like I understand better now about postwar Europe, how long it took everything to get clean and sanitized and making sense again.
January 3, 2014
This tiny little book fit into my bag so that every day I could read one of these gorgeous short stories. Mavis Gallant has such a woman's voice here. I just love her style - some bohemian notes, a Montréaler for sure. The afterword by Mordecai Richler is bittersweet.
June 24, 2018
Cuento incluido en "Los Cuentos" de Mavis Gallant, nos narra la historia de Netta, una mujer fuerte y con la cabeza bien amueblada, que está casada con Jack, su primo hermano, un hombre por el contrario inmaduro, sin carácter y mujeriego. Ambos regentan un hotel en el sur de Francia e incluso siendo un cuento de apenas 35 páginas, Mavis Gallant se las arregla para describirnos todo un microcosmos de personajes que van y vienen del hotel, todo esto bajo la mirada de Netta, a quién no se le escapa nada y que ve su vida pasar, al frente de todo, sin sentir realmente creo que participa activamente en nada, observadora del comportamiento infantil de su marido, expectante.
Es el primer cuento de esta selección de cuentos ya que están ordenados cronológicamente y por estar ambientado entre los años 30 y 40, Mavis Gallant es el primero que selecciona para que lo leamos, aunque esté escrito en 1976. Me encantan las autoras canadienses y a Mavis Gallant no la conocia todavía y la verdad es que me ha gustado muchísimo. En el prólogo, Mavis Gallant explica como hay que leer los relatos, y a mí que me encanta leer cuentos/relatos, es una práctica que siempre he seguido, no leerlos todos del tirón, sino insertar cuentos mientras se está leyendo otras cosas, un cuento al dia:
«Los cuentos no son un capítulo de una novela. No tendrían que ser leídos de corrido, como si una historia fuera la prolongación de otra. Lean uno, cierren el libro, lean algo distinto y vuelvan luego. Los cuentos pueden esperar...» (Mavis Gallant)
Es el primer cuento de esta selección de cuentos ya que están ordenados cronológicamente y por estar ambientado entre los años 30 y 40, Mavis Gallant es el primero que selecciona para que lo leamos, aunque esté escrito en 1976. Me encantan las autoras canadienses y a Mavis Gallant no la conocia todavía y la verdad es que me ha gustado muchísimo. En el prólogo, Mavis Gallant explica como hay que leer los relatos, y a mí que me encanta leer cuentos/relatos, es una práctica que siempre he seguido, no leerlos todos del tirón, sino insertar cuentos mientras se está leyendo otras cosas, un cuento al dia:
«Los cuentos no son un capítulo de una novela. No tendrían que ser leídos de corrido, como si una historia fuera la prolongación de otra. Lean uno, cierren el libro, lean algo distinto y vuelvan luego. Los cuentos pueden esperar...» (Mavis Gallant)
May 25, 2025
I particularly enjoyed her earlier stories that are set in post World War II milieus in Canada and different countries in Europe. “My Heart is Broken” slowly reveals the disturbing situation of a worker’s wife in northern Canada. “When we were Young” has a first person narrator about her poverty stricken life in Spain. One of the best is “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street” where we meet a sort of petty bureaucrat in Geneva and a young Norwegian woman (by way of Sasketchawan Canada), his reaction to her and her religious austere background. “An Autobiography,” has a 1st person narrator of a teacher from Paris who teaches the newly rich in a Swiss school, “The Latehomecomer” is set in postwar Berlin, again in the mind of a former soldier, detained as a POW in France for an “overlong” time.
Gallant assumes so many diverse identities and seems to get these characters’ voices to sound so authentic. The title story, “The Moslem Wife,” more of a novella, is a long range portrait of a marriage, of a woman who operates a hotel on the French Riviera and her wayward husband (the title comes from someone’s observation, that she acts like a “Moslem wife.”) In the afterword, it was interesting to learn from Richler that Gallant faced a lot of hostility from Canadian nationalists (she spent her childhood in Canada) who were outraged that she wrote about “damn foreigners” and that she lived abroad...
Gallant assumes so many diverse identities and seems to get these characters’ voices to sound so authentic. The title story, “The Moslem Wife,” more of a novella, is a long range portrait of a marriage, of a woman who operates a hotel on the French Riviera and her wayward husband (the title comes from someone’s observation, that she acts like a “Moslem wife.”) In the afterword, it was interesting to learn from Richler that Gallant faced a lot of hostility from Canadian nationalists (she spent her childhood in Canada) who were outraged that she wrote about “damn foreigners” and that she lived abroad...
September 16, 2025
Mavis Gallant's short stories are so well written! They make for excellent reads in bed before lights-out!!!
February 7, 2017
Gallant is a great chronicler of a particular midcentury kind of consciousness--postwar, self-conscious but without the lugubrious irony of later writers. I wish Canadians would write fewer historical novels and more of these. She's more cosmopolitan and less icy than Munro, though for me Munro edges her out as a stylist.
The four stars are more for Gallant than this particular collection -- I didn't love them all. While the prose is always crisp, the milieu always well-observed, some stories are dull. But the final two stories, "Grippes and Poche" and "Overhead in a Balloon" with their faintly postmodern edge, were worth the four stars on their own.
The four stars are more for Gallant than this particular collection -- I didn't love them all. While the prose is always crisp, the milieu always well-observed, some stories are dull. But the final two stories, "Grippes and Poche" and "Overhead in a Balloon" with their faintly postmodern edge, were worth the four stars on their own.
Want to read
August 3, 2010NCL.2006-10-01
Want to read
October 31, 2012Did not like the stories and hence discontinued...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews