Leonard Woolf has long been revered as one of the great literary minds of the 20th century, but this superb collection of short stories dating back to his time as a colonial administrator in Ceylon has been almost completely forgotten. This slender volume represents the first time that "Stories of the East" has been available to the general reader. Originally published in 1921 by the Hogarth Press in an edition limited to 300 copies, these stories have hardly seen the light of day since. Sir Christopher Ondaatje, an expert on Leonard Woolf and author of "Woolf in Ceylon, " provides a specially commissioned introduction to this edition in which he argues the case for the enduring importance of these stories.