‘What I am interested in’, says Abdullah Hussein, ‘is how people survive. How they invent ways and means of dealing with their situation in given circumstances and what happens to them in the course of it, how they stand of fall. All writers, I believe, are interested in modes of survival.’

This collection includes three long short stories—‘Night’, ‘The Little Brook’ and ‘The Sea’—all examining, in one way or the other, the limits of human endurance.

In language that abounds in rich, sensuous imagery, Abdullah Hussein confronts a peculiarly contemporary dilemma: the quest for meaning and identity by the individual living in the shadow of exile and guilt, and the futile struggle against the overwhelming forces of alienation.