NO LONGER THE POOR RELATION

The short story often seems to be a neglected or undervalued literary genre. But not at the Munster Literature Centre. This is the home of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, 'currently the world's richest prize for the short story form.' The 2008 prize (worth €35,000) will be awarded to Jhumpa Lahiri at a festival in Cork beginning on 17 September. Amongst those attending will be Yiyun Li, Clare Wigfall and Bernard MacLaverty.

Bucharest-based Irish writer Philip Ó Ceallaigh was on the 2006 shortlist for his debut collection, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse. As its Short Story of the Month the Munster Literature Centre website features a new story by Ó Ceallaigh called 'Thomas and Mohommad', an unsettling account of a tourist's quest for redemption in the narrow streets of Cairo. A similar sense of dislocation pervades 'The Retreat from Moscow', one of the stories from the book, which was first published in the Dublin Review.