'Thomas Hardy met Damon Runyon over a loving cup of small beer.' New York Herald Tribune, 1947; 'A Masterpiece, a warm, beautiful, splendid book.' Howard Fast

Sex, murder, and a devastating, humour mark these three novellas that Gwyn Thomas wrote in 1946. In Oscar, the narrator of death and exploitation fails to fend off the evil that envelops him. InSimeon, the abuse of sexual and family power ends with violent death, and in The Dark Philosophers itself, the grimly humorous philosophers gather in an Italian café to tell the tragic tale of revenge and manslaughter that they engineer.