The title story of this collection, "An Awkward Age", spins the tale of a boy growing into adolescence, who appears to have been taken over by a colony of ants. His diary, initially expressed in the barely literate tones of a young child, becomes more accomplished and assured as the protagonist matu[...]
A secret terrorist group infiltrates the household of a government official's son, with a view to spying on the father and, ultimately, assassinating him. But the young man entrusted with the task - an ailing, world-weary nobodyA" - seized with the purposelessness of life and a sense of his own imp[...]