‘Is everything interconnected, species with species, planet with planet, person with person, photograph with photograph? Is there one story, of which our multiple individual lives are but tiny parts, or are there countless different stories, essentially unrelated despite their dense intermingling?’. In this compelling collection of thirteen essays, Belfast-born Chris Arthur presents a richly complex and subtle exploration of the precariousness and mystery of existence. Taking as his starting point family photographs, boyhood memories and fragments of family history, Arthur draws on religion, philosophy and history in his attempts to fathom ‘the stupendous fabric of the real’. The result is a tour de force, an extended meditation on family, nature, death and time that leaves us with a deeper insight into ourselves and into the ‘true nature’ of the things around us. Published with a foreword by John Wilson Foster, “Words of the Grey Wind” gathers together the best of Chris Arthur’s previously published writing with three new essays to showcase the extraordinary emotional depth and intellectual range of a unique voice in Irish writing.