An inherited aloe vera plant with an interesting history. Friendships cultivated over a lifetime fall apart in testing circumstances. What does the stranger with four fingers and yellow eyes really want?From Far Around They Saw Us Burn is the eagerly-awaited short story collection from Alice Jolly, featuring an extraordinary range of stories including the award-winning ‘Ray The Rottweiler’, which won the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize in 2014, and the title story which was one of the twenty stories selected for the 2021 O. Henry Prize, the most prestigious US short story award.Her first collection of short stories centres the lives of ordinary people and the various ways in which chance encounters and minute decisions change everything. It is compelling, arresting and at times, devasting collection – not least in the title story which was inspired by the tragic true events of the Cavan orphanage fire in 1943.Written with an exemplary eye for detail and an intimate understanding of the complexities of human nature, Jolly’s collection builds up towards the ultimate question: what is revealed of us when we peel away the surfaces, and is it enough?

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