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Jim Crace's internationally acclaimed first book explores the tribes and communities, conflicts and superstitions, flora and fauna of a wholly spellbinding place: an imaginary seventh continent. In these seven tales Crace travels a strange and wonderful landscape: "Talking Skull" takes the reader to a tiny agricultural village renowned for the sexually-charged, mystical milk of its calves; "Electricity" introduces a remote flatland region where a monumental ceiling fan changes an entire town's attitude toward modernization. From the acacia scrub of the flatlands to a city bazaar jammed with vegetable stalls, tourists, and beggars, Crace's invented world is as fabulous as it is eerily familiar.

To those who say there's nothing new to be written or read, Jim Crace has responded. For this provocative collection of short stories, Crace created a whole new continent. Unnamed and unspecified, the continent nevertheless resonates with characters, developments, contradictions and examinations of the path and power of progress. In one story electricity comes to a country in the form of a giant fan; in another a government agent out to exploit a primitive people discovers the beauty of traditional life. The book, which won a Whitbread Prize, takes us to a new world in a journey that causes us look more closely at our own.