"There is the universe, I have come to know, and it is full of pain. This pain can neither be created nor destroyed: only transferred. For every pain healed in someone, a new one is felt in another."

Connected by more than just their exquisite prose, Nick Mulgrew's new stories delve into a world of killer eagles, tattoo removal parlours, hardcore punk guitarists-cum-auditors, turtle sanctuaries, plane crashes, amateur pornographers and biltong-makers -- a world concurrently too strange and too familiar for comfort. A collection of startling imagination and sympathy -- set primarily in South Africa's less fashionable cities and suburbs -- these stories maintain a precarious balance between rich comedy and despair throughout their explorations of grief, spectacle, sex, nostalgia, and the lives of animals, both human and not.

Title: The First Law of Sadness

Author: Nick Mulgrew

Publisher: David Philip Publishers

Paperback, 199pp

ISBN 9781485625780