Author(s): Niall Williams

Popular Penguins

In June, 2006, Picador launch "Picador Shots", a new series of pocket-sized books priced at GBP1. "The Shots" aim to promote the short story as well as the work of some Picador's greatest authors. They will be contemporaryly packaged but ultimately disposable books that are the ideal literary alternative to a magazine. "The Unrequited" by Niall Williams is to be one of the first. "The Unrequited" opens with the arrival in Oslo of Raphael Newell, a Dublin accountant. Someone who has always previously lived on the margins of life, Ray has come to Norway to find the married woman he has fallen in love with. Rejuvenated and invigorated by the experience of being in love, Ray sees the world differently; everything and everyone around him is transformed, and he feels for the first time that he has really come alive. Recounting the couple's first meeting alongside Ray's Norwegian quest, "The Unrequited" is both love story and fable, both a story for our times and - in the themes of love, life and loss it explores - one that is timeless; a story for all ages, in all senses of the word.