Acclaimed short story writer Morris Lurie lures the reader into a world where a world famous engineer is mourned by his four ex-wives who meet once a month (along the one who would have been number five) while his son, the narrator, travels the globe trying to work out how not to run from love; an art critic's (good) advice takes years to digest; a middle-aged man recalls being a young Adonis and how it worked for him as a door-to-door salesman; a father is always given the same present; while in the title story, a twenty-six-year-old in swinging London with an acrylic fake fur overcoat finds himself in hospital and very hungry...

First published in 1985, The Night We Ate the Sparrow was joint runner-up, National Book Council Awards for Australian Literature in the same year.