In the stories that make up In Transit, internationally acclaimed writer Mavis Gallant describes with elegant and scrupulous precision—and with a discerning eye for telling detail—the quirks of human nature and the limits of human compassion. A host of remarkably drawn characters are surveyed with a cool wit and sophisticated intelligence as they struggle to transcend the imprisonment of their provisional lives. Sometimes direct, sometimes tantalizingly oblique, Mavis Gallant's finely textured writing demonstrates once again that she is a master of contemporary prose.