Benedict Kiely is a writer of national and international status. His writing is at once quintessentially Irish and marvellously universal, and a generation of younger writers owe him an enduring debt of inspiration. This celebratory collection brings together for the first time Benedict Kiely's short fiction written between 1963 and 1987. The stories in this volume are rich in imagination and invention, their characters unforgettable, their humour at once affectionate and incisive. Written with apparently effortless style and craft, they amply demonstrate how Kiely's stories have become classics of the genre while at the same time expanding that genre's horizon.