This collection of playful, deadly fables is populated with waifs and strays, a gluttonous thief and a mischievous gardener. The grimly comic story The Argentine Ant moved Gore Vidal to declare ‘if this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better’. – Adam, One Afternoon – The Enchanted Garden – Father to Son – A Goatherd at Luncheon – Leaving Again Shortly – The House of the Beehives – Fear on the Footpath – Hunger at Bévera – Going to Headquarters – The Crow Comes Last – One of the Three is Still Alive – Animal Wood – Seen in the Canteen – Theft in a Cake Shop – Dollars and the Demi-Mondaine – Sleeping Like Dogs – Desire in November – A Judgment – The Cat and the Policeman – Who Put the Mine in the Sea? – The Argentine Ant