Collections of short stories as rich and copious as those of Sean O'Faolain are impossible to review in a short compass. But this third volume of the collected works [Collected Stories, Volume III], which includes stories published from 1971 onwards, has the advantage of concluding with a group of unpublished texts; these are not only individually enthralling, but suggest a general position on the range and possibilities of the short story.

If Maupassant stands for the short story in its classical form, there could scarcely be a more convincing sign of the opposite strategy than in the stories of Kipling. In place of the observance of unities, and the controlled progression to a pointe or punch-line, we have a deliberately wayward use of time and space, and an inclination to make of the mysterious oppositions and convergences of cultures one of the principal sources of subject matter. Sean O'Faolain's...