The ten atmospheric 'Tales of Twilight and Borderlands' which make up The Long Retreating Day are the stuff of things flickering at the edge of experience. We witness a student quarrel which long afterwards brings forth its own bitter harvest; ancient gods that live in human nature and are denied or worshipped at fearful cost; the power of the mind to create what it most dreads; hubris at its darkest in academic life; malevolence that can linger from the past; and the shadows cast by future events.Variously sardonic, dramatic, urbane and sinister, these stories are grounded in real landscapes and informed by the strengths and failings of the human spirit.