Amy Witting was a master of the short story, the genre in which she felt ‘most at home’. Her subjects—childhood and school, marriage and loneliness, the cruelty of men and women—are rendered in a crisp, understated style, at once compassionate and unsentimental. This new selection of twenty pieces from across five decades includes the acclaimed novella-length ‘The Survivors’ and the final appearance of Isobel Callaghan from I for Isobel.

Amy Witting was born in Annandale, an inner suburb of Sydney, in 1918. She attended Sydney University, then taught French and English in state schools. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including The Visit, I for Isobel, Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop and Maria’s War; two collections of short stories; two books of verse, Travel Diary and Beauty Is the Straw; and her Collected Poems.

She had numerous poems and short stories published in magazines such as Quadrant and the New Yorker.

Witting was awarded the 1993 Patrick White Prize. Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop won the Age Book of the Year Award.

Amy Witting died in 2001.

‘Brilliant distillations…tinged with latent tenderness.’ New York Times