A wide-ranging selection of short stories chiefly set in Ireland. They look at life with a keen focus on love and loss, on pain and sorrow, and always with a gentle sense of humour.

Mahon is fiction set against the momentous events that shaped Ireland and its people in the first half of the twentieth century. It is a story of love and violence, of consequence and change. Mahon is a damaged man, a recluse living out his years in mountain country on the west coast of Ireland. He is dangerous and violent, a known killer. To some he is a hero and to others he is a murderer. He lives by his own rules and is always true to himself. It is 1963 and Ireland is changing fast. Mahon makes one of his rare trips to town. A journey that leads him both backwards and forwards in time...