SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE

'One of the best collections you'll read this year' Sunday Times
'Wild, witty stories . . . Exhilarating' Observer

Since his landmark debut collection, There Are Little Kingdoms, and its award-winning sequel in 2012, Dark Lies the Island, Kevin Barry has been acclaimed as one of the world's most accomplished and gifted short story writers.

Barry's lyric intensity, the vitality of his comedy and the darkness of his vision recall the work of masters of the genre like Flannery O'Connor and William Trevor, but he has forged a style which is patently his own.

In this rapturous third collection, we encounter a ragbag of west of Ireland characters, many on the cusp between love and catastrophe, heartbreak and epiphany, resignation and hope. These stories show an Ireland in a condition of great flux but also as a place where older rhythms, and an older magic, somehow persist.

"The master short story teller turns messy emotions into riveting tales of wounded Irish folk . . . One of the best collections you'll read this year" - * Sunday Times *

"Wild, witty stories . . . The west of Ireland teems with canny characters and vivid language . . . Darkly glimmering . . . Their language is exhilarating, its verve evoking the very best of Barry's compatriots while further carving out a territory that's all his own" - * Observer *

"Barry often writes with sonorous wisdom . . . but as readers of his grimly hilarious novels will know, his language is just as precise when it is in the service of comedy . . . Exhilaratingly funny and poignant fables" - * Sunday Telegraph *

"These playful, serious and beautifully crafted stories allow Barry to experiment as we need great writers to do" - * Irish Times *

"The third short-story collection from a stylist to savour brings more exhilarating, darkly witty tales of oddballs yearning after love and enchantment in the wild west of Ireland" - * Guardian, 50 hottest new books everyone should read *

"An extraordinary writer . . . In his short stories Barry seems most fully and brilliantly himself . . . Unimprovable masterpieces . . . So rich and so flawlessly crafted - its best stories feel instantly canonical, as if we've already been reading them for years . . . The opening story is letter-perfect from its first line . . . Funny, moving, built with superior economy, this is the real thing . . . Barry remains the great romantic of contemporary Irish fiction. Like all of the most interesting artists, he gets better with every risk he takes. The courage may be his. But the rewards are all ours" - * Irish Independent *

"Full of the damaged characters, menacing rural scenery and darkly comic, slantwise prose that have become his trademark . . . At each turn, Barry makes his fiction a matter of life and death" - * New Statesman *

"Optimism and sorrow anchor the stories in this collection, where relationships take unexpected turns and characters befuddle one another and themselves. Barry's writing sparkles, as ever, moving speedily between pathos and humour to great effect" - * New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice *