An Intimate Knowledge of the Night

The wonder and the terror.... When an author sits down to write the linking pieces for the stories in his new book, planning to do it by the hours of the night observed by medieval scholars, he is interrupted by phonecalls from his eccentric yet harmless friend, Raymond, a former mental patient with whom he shares some curious notions about the perceived world. At first casual and interested, even helpful, these calls soon become increasingly tense and strange, until the author realizes that what started out as an innocent, fun idea - a shared all-night vigil on the autumn Equinox - is actually serving some other vital purpose, becoming by stages part therapy, part incantatory progress, part vindication of those very theories which will change forever the way he sees the world. Terry Dowling's marvellous new book is about rapture, fear, the secret, darkest mysteries of the world and the human spirit.An Intimate Knowledge of the Night contains the following short stories: The Bullet That Grows in the Gun, The Maze Man, The Terrarium, They Found the Angry Moon, The Gully, The Last Elephant, The Echoes, The Third Gift, The Quiet Redemption of Andy the House, The Mars You Have in Me, The Rediscovery of Tutankhamen's Tomb and Scaring the Train.