Feverish megalomaniac nights. Days of failure and impotence. Dreams of lurid success and the bitter realities of isolation, neglect and breakdown. The angelic ascension of maniacs. Primordial galaxies in a gaping anus. Exiled punks in the Mexican desert. The endless, grim peripheries of major European cities. A long suppressed act of betrayal turns a lifetime of marital happiness into a void of meaningless despair. A sinister writer vanishes in the liminal nightworld of Berlin. A Dublin girl turns her back on a life of comfort and familiarity to drift in the anonymity of a large, amoral city. In this eagerly anticipated follow-up to his debut novel, Here Are the Young Men, Rob Doyle brings us a collection of stories whose characters are lost in the universe and in themselves. They come off the page spitting with rage and wit: deluded, tormented and all too human.