Liam O'Flaherty, who has written short stories in Gaelic and in English, is a worthy successor to the anonymous storytellers of the past. -Vivian Mercier

The Irish have always excelled at the short story, if we can judge by what survives of the old sagas. While all but one or two of the longer tales seem to the modern reader formless and quite unworthy of comparison with the Iliad and the Odyssey, many of the briefer prose narratives pack a whole gamut of emotions into two or three thousand words.