Little Infamies - Panos Karnezis

Panos Karnezis' remarkable stories are all set in the same nameless Greek village. His characters are the people who live there - the priest, the barber, the whore, the doctor, the seamstress, the mayor - and the occasional animal: a centaur, a parrot that recites Homer, a horse called History. Their lives intersect, as lives do in a small place, and they know each other's secrets - the hidden crimes, the mysteries, the little infamies that men commit.

Karnezis observes his villagers with a forgiving eye, and creates a world where magic invariably loses out to harsh reality, a world at once universal, funny and utterly compelling.