One of the most prolific and influential authors of Quebec's literary scene since the late 1950s, Marie-Claire Blais has firmly established an international reputation as a writer who combines strong roots in the literary tradition of her province with an affinity to existentialist fiction of Western Europe and the United States.

The oldest child of five in a working class family, Marie-Claire Blais, daughter of Fernando and Veronique Nolin Blais, was born on 5 October 1939 in the Limoilou section of Quebec City. She received her secondary education at the Couvent Saint-Roch de Québec, a school which she left at her parents' request in 1956 to become a student at a secretarial school. In the three years between leaving the convent and the publication of her first book, she did clerical work for nine different employers, among them an architect, a bank, a Franciscan convent, and a shoe factory...