A bomb is born, lives, and dies in a demented rural school; Ireland experiences a rain of corpses falling from the sky; a strange tribal matriarchy on the banks of the River Boyne is threatened with extermination. In these five long stories the world breaks down in an endless cycle of hunger, desperation, violence, and domination. This is a truly radical vision of a dysfunctional yet stubbornly hopeful world, quite unlike any other in contemporary fiction.