Announcing a major new voice, The End of World is a Cul de Sac is the debut short story collection from the twice shortlisted Sunday Times Audible Short Story Prize writer Louise Kennedy

'A dazzling, heartbreaking debut collection' Guardian

'Kennedy's voice, and her unforgiving gaze, are electric' Sunday Times

'These stories sing, haunt and inspire laughter ... One of the best collections I've read in years' Sinead Gleeson

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
WINNER OF THE JOHN MCGAHERN PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATE O'BRIEN AWARD 2022

The secrets people kept, the lies they told.

In these visceral, stunningly crafted stories, people are effortlessly cruel to one another, and the natural world is a primitive salve. Here, women are domestically trapped by predatorial men, Ireland’s folklore and politics loom large, and poverty – material, emotional, sexual – seeps through every crack.

A wife is abandoned by her new husband in a ghost estate, with blood on her hands; a young woman is tormented by visions of the man murdered by her brother during the Troubles; a pregnant mother fears the worst as her husband grows illegal cannabis with the help of a vulnerable teenage girl; a woman struggles to forgive herself after an abortion threatens to destroy her marriage.

Announcing a major new voice in literary fiction for the twenty-first century, these sharp shocks of stories offer flashes of beauty, and even humour, amidst the harshest of truths.

"[A] dazzling, heartbreaking debut collection . . .With their sensitivity to people’s vulnerabilities and failings, and their sharpness of imagery, these fifteen taut tales recall Annie Proulx at her best: salty, wise, droll and keen to share the lessons of a lifetime" - Guardian

"Gritty, bitter, hard-won, the fifteen stories in this first collection feel a world away from the seeming solipsism of the younger generation of female Irish writers who are conquering the literary world … Kennedy’s voice, and her unforgiving gaze, are electric" - Sunday Times

"To carve such gilded stories as these from such fathomless gorges of despair would be an accomplishment for an old master, let alone for a relative newbie. Yet Kennedy’s spritz of humour, as black as the holes these women are in, elevates her stories from downbeat to transcendent . . . [A] marvellous collection" - Independent

"I am haunted by these unforgettable short stories and believed every single line of every one of them. Louise Kennedy is a very major talent" - Irish Times

"[A] dark, funny, brilliantly downbeat Irish debut. Bitterness, beauty and a caustic wit colour Kennedy’s stories, as the past makes itself unforgettably present in the lives of her vividly drawn characters" - Daily Mail

"Masterful . . . [Kennedy] can make you laugh and wince all at once . . . A writer very much in control of her craft" - Irish Independent