We Don't Know What We're Doing

A young video shop assistant exchanges the home comforts of one mother-figure for a fleeting sexual encounter with another; a brother and sister find themselves at the bottom of a coal mine with a Japanese tourist; a Welsh stag on a debauched weekend in Dublin confesses an unimaginable truth; and a twice-widowed pensioner tries to persuade the lovely Mrs Morgan to be his date at the town's summer festival... Set in Caerphilly, a diminished castle town in South Wales, Thomas Morris' debut collection reveals its treasures in unexpected ways, offering vivid and moving glimpses of the lost, lonely and bemused. By turns poignant, witty, tender and bizarre - these entertaining stories detail the lives of people who know where they are, but don't know what they're doing. This is the work of a young writer with a startlingly fresh voice, an uncanny ear for dialogue and a broad emotional range. We Don't Know What We're Doing is a major launch for the Faber fiction list in 2015.

Thomas Morris's debut story collection We Don't Know What We're Doing won The Wales Book of the Year Award, The Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award, and a Somerset Maugham Prize. His stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published and anthologised in Zoetrope, Best European Fiction, and The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story. Born and raised in Caerphilly, South Wales, he now lives in Dublin, where he is Editor-at-Large at The Stinging Fly.