The Best of Benedict Kiely is a treasure trove of his best and most acclaimed stories, published to mark the centenary of the birth of this great twentieth-century Irish writer. Many of these stories were originally published in The New Yorker before appearing in four collections over a 24-year period during the writer's lifetime. They are quintessential Kiely; superbly crafted, mingling song, anecdote, myth, history and a powerful sense of place into an allusive storyline. They show Kiely's supreme gift in recording the feeling of lived life, pulsing with joys, disappointments and the accidental and deliberate digressions along the way.

Colum McCann has observed in Kiely's work that '… there is really no such thing as an end, because the stories keep unfolding and influencing' and these classic Kiely stories, published together for the first time, will linger with the reader, young or old, long after the final sentence.