Medals and Prizes brings together eight of the best stories and novellas by John Metcalf, a virtuosic champion of the short form. Metcalf was born in Carlisle and emigrated to Canada as a young man, where both his innovations as a prose stylist and his talent as an editor are legendary. Until now, he has never been published in Britain. Spanning more than fifty years, and ranging from some of his earliest published stories to the astonishing late-career ‘Medals and Prizes’, the work gathered here shows us a writer whose voice, at every stage, is unmistakeable.

Entertaining and moving and mischievous, these elegant fictions are a homecoming for a writer ready to assume his rank among Britain’s great short fiction masters.