From Comrade Shakespeare McNab who enlists the help of La Diablesse to retrieve his faltering career at a Caribbean broadcasting station, to the fourteen-year-old English girl who develops a terror of infi nity; from the electrifying description of a woman attacked as she lies sleeping, to the lyrical exploration of myths of El Dorado, Pauline Melville lures the reader into intriguing different worlds. The sheer malevolence of everyday life is offset with hilarity, making these stories both unsettling and funny.