Showing results by author "Barry Pain" in All Categories

A wonderful selection of some of the most bizarre and unsettling stories ever written.

The Giraffe Problem tells the story of an evening at the Problem Club, a secret society of gentlemen in London who meet once a month in a private room above a restaurant, where one of the waiters is the admirable Leonard. Every month Leonard sets the members a problem or challenge. The one who is able to complete the feat successfully wins that month's share of the membership fees.

Barry Eric Odell Pain was born at 3 Sydney Street in Cambridge, on 28th September 1864. He was one of 4 children. It is often said that Pain was discovered by Robert Louis Stevenson, who compared his work to that of Guy de Maupassant. It’s an apt comparison. Pain was also a master of disturbing prose but able to inject parody and light comedy into many of his works. A simple premise could in his hands suddenly expand into a world very real but somehow emotionally fraught and on the very edge of darkness as many of these short stories demonstrate.