Acknowledgements
Introduction
Malcolm Lowry - Strange Comfort Afforded by the Profession (from Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place)
Samuel Beckett - Ping (from Collected Shorter Prose 1945-80)
Elizabeth Bowen - Mysterious Kor (from The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen)
V.S. Pritchett - A Family Man (from V.S. Pritchett: Collected Stories)
Dylan Thomas - The Burning Baby (from Adventures in the Skin Trade)
Graham Greene - The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen (from May We Borrow Your Husband)
Angus Wilson - More Friends Than Lodger (from A Bit Off the Map)
Jean Rhys - The Lotus (from Tigers Are Better Looking)
William Golding - Miss Pulkinhorn (from Encounter, August 1960)
Kingsley Amis - My Enemy's Enemy (from Kingsley Amis: Collected Short Stories)
Ted Hughes - The Rain Horse (from Wodwo)
Alan Sillitoe - The Fishing-boat Picture (from The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner)
Doris Lessing - To Room Nineteen (from A Man and Two Women)
Muriel Spark - The House of the Famous Poet (from Bang Bang You're Dead)
John Fowles - The Enigma (from The Ebony Tower)
J.G. Ballard - Memories in Space Age (from Firebird 3)
William Trevor - A Meeting in Middle Age (from The Stories of William Trevor)
Edna O'Brien - In the House of Darkness (from Mrs Reinhards and Other Stories)
B.S. Johnson - A Few Selected Sentences (from Aren't You Rather Young to be Writing Your Memoirs?)
Malcolm Bradbury - Composition (from Who Do You Think You Are?)
Fay Weldon - Weekend (from Watching Me Watching You)
David Lodge - Hotel des Boobs (from Cosmopolitan, 1986)
Beryl Bainbridge - Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie (from Mum and Mrs Armitage)
Ian McEwan - Psychopolis (from In Between the Sheets)
Angela Carter - Flesh and the Mirror (from Fireworks)
Martin Amis - Let me Count the Times (from Granta 4)
Rose Tremain - My Wife is a White Russian (from Granta 7)
Salman Rushdie - The Prophet's Hair (from London Review of Books, 16 August 1981)
Julian Barnes - One of a Kind (from New Stories 7)
Emma Tennant - Philomela (from Bananas Anthology)
Clive Sinclair - Bedbugs (from Bedbugs)
Graham Swift - Seraglio (from Learning to Swim)
Kazuo Ishiguro - A Family Supper (from Firebird 2)
Adam Mars-Jones - Structural Anthropoligy (from Firebird 1)