Among the best writers this company has published is Ireland's Benedict Kiely. His first book to be released in this country, The State of Ireland, received a front page New York Times Book Review notice in which Guy Davenport wrote, "The first meaning of 'the state of Ireland' is that it's a place where stories are still told, deliciously and by masters of the art, of whom Benedict Kiely is one, perhaps the foremost." This collection was followed by novels, story collections and a separate printing of what William Kennedy called "a small masterpiece, " Proxopera, Kiely's moving and memorable anti-war fable (which, especially in these times, bears reading and re-reading). This treasure chest of a book, containing his complete short stories and novellas, spans forty years, and introduces another generation to one of the great prose stylists of our age, a man who possesses "a unique voice, " and whose "technique is so good as to be invisible." For this edition we have included some sixteen stories never published before in the USA, a new introduction by the author, as well as his afterword to Proxopera. At almost 800 pages, this is the most extensive and ambitious work of fiction our small company has ever issued. Kiely is a member of a select club that includes Chekhov, Welty, Peter Taylor, and another author whose work we championed, Andre Dubus - all writers whose stories cut close to the bone and near to the heart.