In his second collection of short stories, Mike McCormack joins head andheart in a series of tales which weave a fluid vision of a world morphing between the real and the hyperreal. Amid much hollow laughter a prisoner is drawn from his cell in the middle of the night to play a video game; two rural guards ponder the security threat posed by the only man in Ireland not to have written his memoirs; a child tries to offset his destiny as a serial killer by petitioning his father for a beating; a late night American cop show becomes a savage analysis of a faltering marriage in the west of Ireland; two men turn up at the door of a slacker to give him news of his death and recruit him to some mysterious surveillance mission; an older brother worries about the health of his younger sibling; the prodigal son returns to reveal the fear and hypocrisy which lies at the heart of his brothers life. In twelve stories McCormack’s characters find themselves trying to hold onto their identities in a world where love is too often and too easily obscured.

A cross betweenNineteen Eighty FourandThe X-Files… Combineschillingly credible scenarios with acerbic ‘political commentary …Powerfully imagined … Richly inventive and forcefully ironic,Notes From a Comaestablishes McCormack as one of the most original and important voices in contemporary Irish fiction’ –the Irish Times ‘A mordant yet funny fable for our times, rich in contemporary culturalreferences’ –Sunday Independent

MIKE MCCORMACK was born in 1965 and comes from the west of Ireland. He is the author of a collection of short stories, Getting it in the Head (1996), and two novels, Crowe's Requiem (1998) and Notes from a Coma (2005). In 1996 McCormack was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature. Getting it in the Head was chosen as New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1998. In 2006 Notes from a Coma was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award. He has received several Arts Council Awards and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. The author currently lives in Galway.