The artistic representation of reality in Irish language prose fiction has not, to quote Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, gone “gentle into that good night.” Many Irish language and English literary critics held a negative view of realism in the 1990s and 2000s, where it was often referred to as “dirty realism”. Relying on Joseph McMinn’s statement that the connection between realist and non-realist fiction is not a hierarchical relationship, I maintain that realism in Irish language fiction is, and has always been, an energizing force for experimentation. This is nowhere more evident than in the work of short story writer Daithí Ó Muirí, a native English speaker born in Co. Monaghan in Northern Ireland now residing in the Connemara Gaeltacht, an Irish speaking area in the West of Ireland. In this essay, I look at the subject matter in Ó Muirí’s first three collections, Seacht Lá na Díleann (1998), Cogaí (2002), and Uaigheanna agus Scéalta Eile (2002), in which he explores subjects and themes that are classically realistic: war, death, religion, relationships between men and women, and work. Much of Ó Muirí’s work is experimental due to his use of allegory and fantasy, yet many of the stories remain rooted in the realities of the world. Máirín Nic Eoin describes this note of reality in Ó Muirí’s work as comprising aspects of the realistic, “gnéithe den réalaíoch” [aspects of the realistic] (94). This essay explores how the short stories of Ó Muirí often combine realism and magic realism, particularly in his representations of masculinities and in works concerning the impact of war, violence and displacement on men’s lives. In this essay, I argue that the critical neglect of Ó Muiri’s work is perhaps due to his approaches to these themes, and to the graphic descriptions his stories contain. I show that Ó Muirí’s fiction provides a fresh if somewhat bleak narrative of 21st century realism in Irish language prose fiction.