'John McGahern is considered by many to be the most important Irish prose writer of the last fifty years. McGahern s short stories equal his finest novels, reflecting both the richness of the ordinary, and the extraordinary, in the lives of a variety of individuals: the jilted lover waiting with would-be writers in a Dublin pub on a summer evening; the bitter climax between a father and son as a marriage begins; the fortunes and misfortunes of the Kirkwood family; and many more.For this revised edition, completed shortly before his death, John McGahern edited and deleted a number of stories from the Collected Stories that first appeared in 1992. This is the authorised edition of a modern classic. He writes with authority and gravity, and with an instinct for the most appropriate detail . . . His terse narrative seems free and full. He has the gift of being able to move fluently and unselfconsciously between a simple and a heightened style. Times Literary Supplement'One of the greatest writers of our era.' Hilary Mantel, New Statesman