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Lyrical, dark, comic or iconoclastic, the Irish short story has always punched well above its weight. Anne Enright has brought together a dazzling collection of Irish stories by authors born in the twentieth century – from Mary Lavin and Frank O’Connor to Claire Keegan and Kevin Barry. With a pithy and passionate introduction by Enright, The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story traces this great tradition through decades of social change and shows the pleasure Irish writers continue to take in the short-story form. Deft and often devastating, the short story dodges the rolling mythologies of of Irish life to produce truths that are delightful and real • Also includes stories by: Maeve Brennan, Roddy Doyle, Mary Lavin, Colum McCann, William Trevor, John McGahern, Colm Toibin, Claire Keegan and Kevin Barry

They used to send each other letters. The return address was always the same: Dept. of Speculation • They used to be young, brave, and giddy with hopes for their future. They got married, had a child, and skated through all the small calamities of family life. But then, slowly, quietly something changes. As the years rush by, fears creep in and doubts accumulate until finally their life as they know it cracks apart and they find themselves forced to reassess what they have lost, what is left, and what they want now • Written with the dazzling lucidity of poetry, Dept. of Speculation navigates the jagged edges of a modern marriage to tell a story that is darkly funny, surprising and wise

One of the great contemporary European writers takes on Europe’s biggest issue • Richard has spent his life as a university professor, immersed in the world of books and ideas, but now he is retired, his books remain in their packing boxes and he steps into the streets of his city, Berlin. Here, on Oranienplatz, he discovers a new community — a tent city, established by African asylum seekers. Hesitantly, getting to know the new arrivals, Richard finds his life changing, as he begins to question his own sense of belonging in a city that once divided its citizens into them and us • At once a passionate contribution to the debate on race, privilege and nationality and a beautifully written examination of an ageing man’s quest to find meaning in his life, Go, Went, Gone showcases one of the great contemporary European writers at the height of her powers

Haroun's father is the greatest of all storyletters. His magical stories bring laughter to the sad city of Alifbay. But one day something goes wrong and his father runs out of stories to tell. Haroun is determined to return the storyteller's gift to his father. So he flies off on the back of the Hoopie bird to the Sea of Stories - and a fantastic adventure begins

This Book Will Save Your Life is an uplifting story about one man's efforts to bring himself back to life • Richard is a modern-day everyman, a middle-aged divorcee trading stocks out of his home in Los Angeles who needs no one. His life has slowed almost to a standstill until two incidents conspire to hurl him back into the world. One day he wakes up with a knotty cramp in his back, which rapidly develops into an all-consuming pain. At the same time a wide sinkhole appears outside his living-room window, threatening the foundations of his house. A vivid novel about compassion and transformation, This Book Will Save Your Life reveals what can happen if you are willing to open yourself up to the world around you • Since her debut in 1989, A. M

Out at sea, in a sudden storm, a man is struck by lightning. When he wakes, injured and adrift on a kayak, his memory of who he is and how he came to be there is all but shattered. Now he must pit himself against the pain and rely on his instincts to get back to shore, and to the woman he dimly senses waiting for his return. With its taut narrative and its wincingly visceral portrait of a man locked in an uneven struggle with the forces of nature, this is a powerful new work from one of the most distinctive voices in British fiction

In England half a century ago, well-brought-up young women are meant to aspire to the respectable life. Some things are not to be spoken of; some are most certainly not to be done. There are rules, conventions. Meg Bailey obeys them. She progresses from Home Counties school to un-Bohemian art college with few outward signs of passion or frustration. Her personality is submerged in polite routines; even with her best friend, Roxane, what can’t be said looms far larger than what can. But circumstances change. Meg gets a job and moves to London. Roxane gets married to a man picked out by her mother. And then Meg does something shocking – shocking not only by the standards of her time, but by our own. As sharp and startling now as when it was written, Don’t Look at Me Like That matches Diana Athill’s memoirs After a Funeral and Instead of a Letter in its gift for storytelling and its unflinching candour about love and betrayal

The stories in The Safety of Objects are both bizarre and believable, very funny but also frightening and sad. A girl’s blonde Barbie doll seduces her teenage brother in an intense episode of erotic obsession; a couple go off the rails and smoke crack while their children are staying with their grandmother; and a lawyer seeks revenge on his boss by urinating into his potted plant every evening

Wiola lives in a close-knit agricultural community. Wiola has a black cat called Blackie. Wiola’s father was a deserter but now he is a taxidermist. Wiola’s mother tells her that killing spiders brings on storms. Wiola must never enter the seamstress’s ‘secret’ room. Wiola collects matchbox labels. Wiola is a good Catholic girl brought up with fables and nurtured on superstition. Wiola lives in a Poland that is both very recent and lost in time • Swallowing Mercury is about the ordinary passing of years filled with extraordinary days. In vivid prose filled with texture, colour and sound, it describes the adult world encroaching on the child’s. From childhood to adolescence, Wiola dances to the strange music of her own imagination

When Wolf’s recently-estranged wife Miriam dies from cancer, his entire world is turned upside down. Wolf and his daughter, Ruth, travel to New York from London to scatter Miriam’s ashes in the Hudson River. During the ten High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur they connect up with Miriam’s conservative Jewish family, who are adamantly against Miriam’s choice of burial. Battling the antagonism of Miriam’s Orthodox family, Wolf is also coming to terms with his own hopes to put right wrongs before it’s too late • A tenderly written story of time, grief and memory, Ten Days delves deep into the complicated love between a father and daughter and the bonds of marriage over older family ties

District Attorney Varga is shot dead while picking a sprig of jasmine. Then Judge Sanza is killed. Then Judge Azar. Is this string of murders an individual vendetta or a more sinister plot? The charming Inspector Rogas is determined to find out. The pursuit of truth and justice are Rogas’s vocation, but his work is frustrated by a system which defies his understanding. He needs a key, a way in, a map, and he is sure that his chief suspect Cres can provide it… • The book, written in 1971, uncannily prefigures the Red Brigade’s subsequent killing of magistrates and the Catholic-Communist pact of the late 1970s in Italy. Developed under Sciascia’s hand in the spirit of a parody, Equal Danger has come to be regarded as a wide-ranging political thriller, one of the masterpieces of the genre