Nicholas Shakespeare’s collected stories take us around the globe and into the intimate lives of his characters and the dilemmas and temptations they face. The opening novella, ‘Oddfellows’, tells the little-known history of the only enemy attack on Australian soil during the Great War, when, in January 1915, the outback town of Broken Hill was rocked by horrifying events. From this dramatic First World War encounter, we are taken to the faded glamour of 1960s Bombay, to a Bolivian mining town in 1908 where civic folly is running amok, and to an Argentinian farm presided over by a former air stewardess and her husband. Across ocean and continents, these are stories of connection and disconnection, misunderstanding and missed opportunities, identity and displacement.