Th is collection of essays on short story theory and practice from a twenty-fi rst century perspective, edited by Viorica Patea, suggests the existence of a renewed academic interest in the genre, corroborated by the prestigious publications produced in the fi rst decade of this century: Farhat Ift ekharuddin et al.’s Postmodern Approaches to the Short Story (2003); Per Winther, Jakob Lothe and Hans H. Skei’s Th e Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Th eory and Analysis (2004); Adrian Hunter’s Th e Cambridge Introduction to the Short Story in English (2007); José R. Ibáñez, José Francisco Fernández and Carmen Bretones’s Contemporary Debates on the Short Story (2007); Heather Ingman’s A History of the Irish Short Story (2009); Paul March-Russell’s Th e Short Story: An Introduction (2009); or Jorge Sacido’s Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Short Story in English (2012), among them. (Abstract provided by the author)