These twelve masterful short stories are by one of Ireland's leading practitioners of the art (previous collections include Adventures in a Bathyscope, 1998, and Lipstick on the Host, 1992). Mathews is a writer worthy of Joyce, whose condensed language conveys learning, sophistication, true feeling and poignancy. The range of subject matter is conveyed in the story titles: 'Charlie Chaplin's Wishbone', 'Access', 'Barber-Surgeons', 'Waking a Jew', 'Cuba', 'The Seven Affidavits of Saint-Artaud', 'A Woman from Walkinstown', 'In the Form of Fiction', 'The Logos of the Zoo', and 'Information for the User'. The stories are set in Ireland and principally in Dublin of the 1960s.