The Burnt Ones is a collection of eleven short stories by Australian writer Patrick White, first published by Eyre and Spottiswoode in 1964.

[2] The title comes from the Greek turn of phrase meaning, "the poor unfortunates" (οι καυμενοι [hoi kaumenoi]), the burnt ones.

Jum and Eileen are left alone in the lounge room with the recording which starts with the birds, but includes the unwitting sounds of lovemaking in the bush until they hear the voices of the host and his secretary, making them uncomfortable witnesses to a secret affair.

Caught up in storytelling in a mouldering summer house, the middle-aged Greek, Malliakas visits an old friend's contact and octogenarian, Philippides in Cologny, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Over tea, he hears the Greek-centred love story of Yanko and his jealous Constantia, of prophecy and Russian glassware, precious for a reason.

Intellectual Sissy Kamara writes unpublished poetry, encourages artists and lives with her husband Sotos Louloudis of mysterious means.

From charitable beginnings, life with the outspoken Miss Docker becomes even more strained until Mrs Custance arranges for her to move to a home, freeing them to become closer than before in the joint knowledge she would be unbearable to the inmates.

Leaving a trail of well-intentioned exposures and unwelcome remarks, Miss Docker goes on to assail the local minister in the final scene.

Within a few years, the two children meet again as teenagers in reversed roles – Titina, rich, beautiful, charming and based in Paris, is instead generous to Dionysios.

As they climb the baking streets, their wealthy American life falls away until they arrive – a couple of Greeks after all – in Kikitsa's cat-infested apartment.

The Town Councillor's wife, Mrs Hogben prepares to bury her sister Daise Morrow and her daughter Meg is on leave from school for the funeral.

Daise seems to embody the only person accepting of both sides of the tracks, until a tender truce is played out between Meg and the dumpers' son, Lummy that suggests life will always slip from the controls of social standing.

Critic Hameeda Hossain says, "In describing the pathos of a slow crumbling of suburban souls, his stories evoke a sense of tragedy... of a whole way of life.

[2] In his 1976 essay, Ingmar Björkstén states that the short story is "not Patrick White's best medium of expression" during his discussion of The Burnt Ones.