Considered to be one of the best Irish writers of the twentieth century, Aidan Higgins has earned a reputation throughout Europe as an unusual and astringent prose stylist. This omnibus of selected short fiction is the perfect introduction to the talents of this Irish successor to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett (although Higgins's work is perhaps more reminiscent of his Welsh contemporary Dylan Thomas), and displays Higgins's warmth of language and character. From a melancholy tale of suicide in "North Salt Holdings" to a colorful depiction of J. J. Catchpole's escapades in "Catchpole, "...

Originally published as three separate volumes--"Donkey's Years," " Dog Days," and "The Whole Hog"--"A Bestiary" relates the life and times of one of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers. As in his fiction, Higgins's writing exquisitely captures sights, smells, and emotions, detailing his life from childhood in County Kildare before his family's economic decline, to his mother's slow, agonizing death; from his travels in England and South Africa, to his two years spent living with a schoolmistress after the end of his first marriage.

In writing his memoirs Higgins exposes the sources...

Opening with a quote from Richard Brautigan--"I've been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning"--Scenes from a Receding Past constructs the adolescence and early adulthood of Dan Ruttle out of a variety of scenes and reminiscences about his life in Ireland, his time in a Catholic school, his first sexual experiences, and his brother's mental breakdown. The second half of the book centers around his relationship with his future wife Olivia, her past, and her former lovers. Calling to mind Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young...