Caldwell plays her Chinese ace straightaway, understandably so. Yan Ge’s kinetic prose illustrates the possibilities of the short form by further exploring the issue of identity in ‘How I fell in love with the well-documented life of Alexander Whelan’. Claire (real name Xiaohan) meets Alex at a Foreign Movies No Subtitles screening. They flirt and she adds him to Facebook. Next day she learns that he has died overnight. Worried that she might be in some way responsible, Claire explores Alex’s social media accounts, going so far as to meet up with his friends. The tone is off-kilter, compelling, and richly humorous. Commonplace technology is weaved seamlessly into the narrative. The dialogue is scathing and funny. Ge has only recently begun writing in English. On this evidence, the Dubliner is a truly exciting new Irish voice.

Such a strong opening could have been risky, but the quality is maintained throughout the collection. Being Various contains an embarrassment of riches. Early stories from Danielle McLaughlin and Louise O’Neill deal with the excruciating awkwardness of breakups. Pregnancy and its associated travails – a recurring theme – are taken to their nightmarish extreme in Elske Rahill’s ‘Stretch Marks’. Okorie’s transgender protagonist navigates the choppy waters of race and internet dating in the memorable ‘BrownLady12345’.

Unusually for a literary compendium, science fiction makes an appearance in three stories: Jan Carson’s Black Mirror-esque ‘Pillars’, which sees hovering affirmation monoliths allocated to depressives; Nicole Flattery’s ‘Feather’, wherein men are reduced to animalistic companions without speech who must be walked on a leash; and Sinéad Gleeson’s ‘The Lexicon of Babies’, which sees children born as letters of the alphabet, causing a breakdown in traditional societal hierarchies.

A flurry of brilliant stories towards the end (there are twenty-four in all) ensures a winning finish. Barry’s ‘Who’s-Dead McCarthy’ typifies his unique take on small-town Ireland and highlights his mastery of banter when the narrator keeps bumping into a man with comprehensive knowledge of unusual local deaths. McKinty – who lived in Melbourne for a time – contributes a story set in post-Troubles Northern Ireland. ‘Jack’s Return Home’ sees the exiled lesbian daughter of a crime boss granted a reprieve to attend her father’s funeral in Carrickfergus. This tense affair, throughout which she is in mortal danger, ends with a proposition that will take Jack down a path that may shock some readers but will be familiar to anyone versed in the politics of that tumultuous province. McKinty is arguably the best crime writer in the world right now.

Sally Rooney (photograph by Jonny L Davies/Penguin Random House)

Rooney is also enjoying widespread fame, thanks to her novel Normal People. Her contribution here, ‘Colour and Light’, was published in The New Yorker earlier this year. Aidan, a hotel receptionist, is introduced to a friend of his brother’s, a bored, aloof film producer. She takes a flirtatious interest in young Aidan, although her motives are impenetrable. The manner in which she toys with him, leaving the inexperienced boy confused and irritated, is a joy to behold. Rooney’s skilful dissection of unspoken communication and misread signals speaks volumes to her understanding of how people interact.

The final word goes to Kajermo, a Finn who has lived in Dublin for forty years. Harking back to the themes mentioned in Caldwell’s introduction, Kajermo’s ‘Alienation’ sees a Czech-Slovak-Hungarian woman trapped in Dublin after her husband goes to the pub for a pint and never returns, leaving her with two adult children and no official visa status. To survive, she writes a syndicated newspaper column that views Ireland through the doe-eyed filter of an acclimated immigrant, while facing daily discrimination because of her unshakeable Eastern European accent. This is contemporary Ireland in microcosm, a situation mirrored across the developed world at a time when no one is really sure how to describe who they are anymore.