Six stories which showcase Rabindranath Tagore’s breathtaking range and empathy. The first Asian winner of the Nobel Prize, his work – written in Bengali across the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries – has resonated for generations. In ‘The Hungry Stones’, a traveller is seduced by supernatural visions in a haunted palace, while ‘The Skeleton’ gives voice to the dead in a tale of hidden passion.

Tagore’s humanity shines through in ‘The Cabuliwallah’, a moving account of an unlikely friendship between a peddler and a young girl, and ‘The Home-Coming’ offers a poignant study of a boy’s longing for love. The Postmaster explores a rural orphan’s quiet devotion, while ‘Mashi’ depicts an aunt’s desperate attempts to shield her nephew from the reality of his failing marriage. Through his stories with their recurring themes of love and heartbreak, Tagore captures both the lives of ordinary people and the common experiences of the human condition.

This series of pocket-sized paperbacks celebrates the art of the short story and marks Macmillan Collector’s Library’s 10th anniversary. Each contains a curated selection of short stories from a literary giant: Katherine Mansfield, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Alice Dunbar Nelson, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Rabindranath Tagore.