“Now one could imagine that the little front legs rubbed against each other lightly, joyfully. The horrible danger was over; it had escaped; it was ready for life again.”Deft, subtle, and bitingly ironic, Katherine Mansfield’s short story is a highly concentrated depiction of grief and cruelty. Taking as its narrative occasion a brief meeting between two bereaved fathers, The Fly remains an outstanding literary portrayal of the shadow cast by the First World War.
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) is one of the most widely admired practitioners of short narrative fiction ever to have written in the English language. She was born and grew up in New Zealand and later became an important figure in English Modernist circles.
