The Precarious Real

What is real?

The question rarely announces itself. It arrives in smaller ways. A door opens where it shouldn’t. A message alters everything. A moment refuses to remain in the past.

The works in The Precarious Real begin in the ordinary world—drawing rooms, country lanes, railway platforms. Nothing appears extraordinary. And yet, in each, something shifts. What seemed stable becomes uncertain. What seemed certain gives way.

Some of these stories turn on deception, others on desire, others on the strange elasticity of time. Some edge toward the supernatural. Others remain entirely within the everyday, and are no less unsettling for it. Together, they suggest that reality is not a fixed structure, but something more fragile—held in place by perception, expectation, and the stories we tell ourselves.

The result is not a single answer, but a lingering awareness: that the familiar world may be less secure than it appears, and that the boundaries we rely on are thinner than we imagine.

Part of the Brown Paper Library: A series of themed anthologies drawn entirely from the public domain. Each volume gathers a range of forms — short stories, poetry, fables, myths, plays, journal entries, and more — around a single unexpected idea. Curated for readers who love to be surprised by what they find.