Twenty-Three Stories by Twenty and Three Authors

In Short

This collection serves as a curated display of the short story form at its most potent. Spanning tales of colonial anxiety, supernatural haunting, and stark psychological unraveling, the book captures the restless spirit of its era. Whether depicting the isolated horror of a dying colonial official in China or the primal obsession of men driven to murder by a drought, these stories endure because they focus on the universal tremors of the heart. It is a haunting, often somber testament to the power of a single, well-wrought narrative.

The Story

The collection traverses a vast emotional and geographic landscape. In one instance, a man finds a home in Brittany only to uncover the spectral, violent history of a wife who, centuries prior, was driven to defend her small dog from a cruel husband. Elsewhere, the narrative shifts to the grimy, atmospheric streets of London’s East End, where a young woman is rescued from a brutish boxer by a quiet, devoted Chinese man, only to see that sanctuary shattered by xenophobic rage. The tone shifts again to the blinding, arid expanses of the desert or the oppressive damp of the Congo, where characters find themselves stripped of their social pretenses.

The arc of the collection is not linear but thematic; it moves from the domestic and the historical into the surreal and the murderous. We see a man in a colonial outpost succumb to the suffocating isolation of the "other," his nerves frayed by the sight of coolies digging his own eventual grave. We witness the terrifying intensity of a religious ritual in Kairwan, where the drums and the frenzy of the worshippers mirror the internal volatility of the human spirit. The stories often conclude in moments of stark, irreversible finality—a murder committed over water rights, a suicide in a swamp, or a sudden, unexplained death at a desk.

Some tales flirt with the uncanny, such as the man who realizes he is trapped in a cycle of violent impulses, only to find the truth of his condition through a moment of devastating, lucid clarity. Others remain grounded in the brutal reality of human nature, like the pirate Sharkey, whose own crew—repulsed by his excesses—eventually delivers him to the gallows. By the time the reader reaches the final entries, the collection has built a cumulative weight. We are left with the sense that these characters, whether living in the past or the present, are all "revenants"—ghosts of their own desires, wandering through lives they only partially control. The stories do not offer redemption; they offer, instead, a sharp, unblinking look at the moments when the "small door" of the soul swings open, revealing the void beyond.

How It Unfolds

The haunting of Kerfol A solitary visitor to a Breton estate uncovers a tragic history of a woman and her dogs. The narrative reveals how the cruelty of an obsessive husband inevitably invites a spectral retribution.

The clash of worlds A young girl is caught between a violent, possessive boxer and a man of an entirely different culture. The story juxtaposes the beauty of a quiet sanctuary against the encroaching, irrational hatred of the outside world.

The descent into obsession In the desert and the wild places of the globe, men find their sanity tested by the landscape. Whether chasing a lost path or a source of water, they are consumed by a singular, destructive fixity of purpose.

The final confrontation The collection builds toward moments of acute crisis where social order collapses. Whether it is a brother killing a brother to end an unbearable tension or a colonial official panicking at the prospect of a foreign grave, the resolution is always sharp, swift, and absolute.

The People

The characters in these stories are often defined by their inability to escape their own natures. Anne, the mistress of Kerfol, is a woman of quiet, desperate fidelity whose affection for her small dog becomes the focal point of her husband’s monstrous jealousy. Battling, the boxer, is a man fueled by a coarse, unreasoning xenophobia, whose anger acts as a catalyst for his own undoing. Wilson is a man of the land, a farmer whose love for his sheep—his "children"—drives him to commit a horrific act of violence against a neighbor who denies him water. Leidall, struggling with his own mental volatility, provides a chilling look at a man who briefly glimpses his own potential for violence and begs for the safety of restraint. These figures are not heroes; they are vessels for intense, often destructive emotions, and their stories are marked by their tragic realization that they are, in the end, prisoners of their own past choices and irrational impulses.

In Its Own Voice

“And I swear to be faithful,” she returned, “if only for the sake of having my little dog at my feet.”

Anne, the protagonist of the Kerfol story, makes a solemn vow that seals her tragic fate with her jealous husband.

“And if the Devil himself would come along the road to fetch me from this cursed place, I’d go with him!”

Marie Lemaire expresses her profound, long-simmering resentment toward her life and her husband during a tense, wine-soaked dinner.

“I wanted to be buried at home, not in that grave he had seen that day.”

The taipan is consumed by a sudden, irrational terror of dying in a foreign land, a fear that precedes his own mysterious end.

What It's Really About

At its core, this book examines the fragility of the human psyche when confronted with the unknown. It asks whether we ever truly belong to the places we inhabit or if we are merely visitors, waiting for the "small door" of our consciousness to close. The stories wrestle with the tension between our desire for domestic stability—the "secret yearnings for domesticity"—and the chaotic, sometimes violent forces that lie just beneath the surface of everyday life. It is an exploration of the "forsaken," looking at how isolation, prejudice, and secret obsessions can turn a man against his neighbor, his brother, or even his own sanity.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate the precision of early twentieth-century prose will find much to admire here. The writing is elegant, often restrained, yet capable of sudden, violent shifts that keep the reader on edge. It feels like stepping into a library of forgotten memories; there is a distinct, moody atmosphere that characterizes the collection, one that lingers long after the book is closed.

However, a reader must be prepared for the period-specific attitudes contained within. The stories reflect the colonial perspectives and cultural stereotypes of their time, which can be jarring to a modern reader. There is no attempt to soften these aspects; the tales are presented as they were written, warts and all. The length of the stories makes them perfect for short sittings, though the cumulative effect is one of deepening melancholy. This is not a book for those seeking easy answers or heroic arcs; it is for those who find beauty in the shadows and who want to see how the greatest storytellers of the early twentieth century navigated the darker, more unsettling corners of the human heart. You will leave these pages feeling that you have traveled, briefly, into the minds of people who have lost their way, and in doing so, perhaps gained a sharper understanding of your own.