The Hero Game and Other Dublin Stories

The Hero Game and Other Stories consists of ten remarkable tales of tortured lust and unrequited love, Roman Catholic guilt and Irish Republican fervour in the Dublin of the 1920s through to the 1940s. They are cracked and grimy windows into the city's past, a past teeming with Dublin characters - IRA men, Christian Brothers, schoolboys, shopkeepers, horse and cabmen, widows, spinsters, businessmen, priests and prostitutes. Drawn from James Manning's own experiences growing up and working in Dublin, these powerful stories are a love letter to the Fair City of his youth. They bring the Dublin of a bygone age to vivid life and are both a "very adjacent" read in their own right and an important record of the social mores, the sexual conduct, the religious and political beliefs and other day-to-day concerns of ordinary - and therefore extraordinary - Dublin people between the wars and after.