Maurice Duggan's Collected Stories is a powerful collection of short stories from one of New Zealand's finest writers of the genre. Duggan's lyrical power and exceptional style come to the fore in these brilliant stories, which are tinged with undercurrents and ambivalences. The variety of language gives great vitality to tales of a Catholic boyhood, troubled marriage, loneliness, small town ambitions and sexuality. Maurice Duggan destroyed his unpublished fiction, so Collected Stories represents virtually all of his remaining works. The critic, poet and novelist C. K. Stead has compiled and edited this collection, in addition to providing an introduction and in-depth biographical information. Stead describes the stories in this volume as 'some of the most perfect short fictions written by a New Zealander'.