A wonderful collection of short stories from the doyenne of the form.
FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)
'The Mackay vision . . . as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house' GUARDIAN
'Her style has a lyric elegance that has deceived critics into describing her, with that most dismissive term of faint praise, as 'gentle' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'The bizarre and the banal, the half-remembered and the yet-to-come' INDEPENDENT
Shena Mackay is one of the very best short-story writers in the world. The Atmospheric Railway contains not only thirteen brilliant new stories, but a selection of twenty-three more from her previous collections, making it a delight for her existing admirers and the perfect introduction to her work for newcomers.
Shena Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1944. Her writing career began when she won a prize for a poem written when she was fourteen. Two novellas, Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumberger and Toddler on the Run were published before she was twenty. Redhill Rococo won the 1987 Fawcett Prize, Dunedin won a 1994 Scottish Arts Council Book Award, The Orchard on Fire was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize and, in 2003, Heligoland was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and Whitbread Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Southampton.