ABOUT THIS BOOK...

The Return of the Lorikeets is the twelfth of my fiction books published in the last fifteen years, two of these being novels. That means the present volume is the tenth of a series of short stories. Of course some of these stories stretch back beyond the first publication in 1980 of To Command the Cats. All stories in the present volume are new, surfacing themselves in the past twelve months.

Richard Walsh, who published To Command the Cats, said he saw nothing different and better in the quality, style and content of my second book The Translation of Mr Piffy which he therefore declined to publish. For years I have had a problem; namely that I considered a yam to be a yam, that is, just a story to entertain. Of course a writer wants to get a point across, and in that sense has something prophetic to say. This, surely, is the way of all art.

Now-in the past few years-it has come clear to me that all living is a story, and each event of life is a part of that story. In this sense true biography is alive, adding to our knowledge of humanity and the world in which it has lived, to say nothing of what I call I mystery'-the secret and the sense of the heart of our history.

When one is dealing with these issues, fiction can be a rich genre for sharing our human insights. I think most folk welcome a little wisdom-those understandings gleaned from the doings and the thinkings of the human race. Most of us are fascinated by what flows down from the source of mystery, from the person-or persons-we call 'hierophants'. A hierophant is one who has gathered wisdom from the past and usefully passes it on in the present. Cultures have their hierophants in shamans, gurus, pundits, priests and the guardians of mythology, rites and ceremonies.

In this present set of stories I have tried to develop a few aspects of that mystery of wisdom. Stories which are only social documents smack of propaganda and moralism. Where, however, human beings share insights and realities, they come to a high level of genuine entertainment. The human spirit is fascinated, thrilled, delighted and, often, frightened and terrified.

I hope some of this may be taking my writing beyond its original 'quality, style and substance'. I hope it may unveil a little more of the mystery of human beings, their environment and their living. In doing so I trust it will genuinely entertain you.

Geoffrey Bingham