An Arrow in Flight

Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publish date: 5 March 2026
Pages: 304
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English

Subjects: Fiction, Literary, Short Stories (single author), Women, Cultural Heritage, World Literature, Ireland, 20th Century, Literary Collections, European, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Mary Lavin is the great unsung voice of Irish fiction. Here are her very best, most electric stories: illuminating, moving, arrows in flight.

SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY COLM TÓIBÍN

Mary Lavin's stories feature ordinary people in the tight confines of ordinary life. From rural Ireland and the streets of Dublin they charm, irritate and intrigue in complicated brilliance, appearing to us with unique freshness. Good friendships, bad deeds, frustrations, missteps, hope and laughter are all found in captivating stories where real and astonishing things happen.

Few women were so consistently published in the New Yorker and yet today Lavin's work is largely unpublished and overlooked. This collection re-establishes her as one of the most genius, irresistible and memorable voices of the last century.

SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY COLM TOÍBÍN

'She is, to come right out with it, magnificent' New York Times

'Mary Lavin's stories are a delight. They are delicate, but not too delicate to carry tragedy on one shoulder and comedy on the other' Sunday Times

'Lavin writes like a dream' New York Times Book Review