David Constantine

978-1905583218
1905583214
£7.99 or £6.75 if you buy online now.
Published: 10 Sep 09

*Shortlisted for the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award*

‘Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form.’
– The Reader
'If it's possible to be a romantic existentialist, David Constantine is... But beware: this understanding, and Constantine's way with it, can leave some other kinds of contemporary fiction feeling brittle and empty.'
– The Guardian
'The Shieling is so good I'll be surprised if there's a better collection this year...'
– The Independent
'Constantine uses words beautifully, balancing language and image with the sensitivity of a poet...'
– The Metro

Many of the characters in David Constantine’s new collection seem driven to absent themselves, to abscond from the pressures of their lives into strange ideas, distant places, even private languages. There are involuntary absences too, in grief and speechless old age. Viewed from without, his characters may appear absurd – like the vicar who starts conversing with the Devil – or unreachably lonely – like the man drowned in the black waters of the Irwell. But such is the force of Constantine’s compassion, we cannot help but enter fully into each peculiar fate. And as we descend through the strata of these different lives, there, in the depths, are forces of hope and redemption also: like the spring starting deep in a quarry that in time will become a lake or the secret haven of the title story, a safehouse for dreams.

Praise for Under the Dam:

'Every sentence is both unpredictable and exactly what it should be. Reading them is a series of short shocks of (agreeably envious) pleasure...'
– AS Byatt, Book of the Week, The Guardian.

'Flawless but unsettling'
- Boyd Tonkin, Books of the Year 2005, The Independent

'Constantine is writing for his life. Every sentence and paragraph is shaped, tense with meaning and unobtrusively beautiful, his images of the natural world burning their way into the reader’s mind...'
- Maggie Gee, The Sunday Times, 22 Jul 2007, reviewing William Trevor's Cheating at Canasta.

About the Author
David Constantine is an award-winning poet and translator. His collections of poetry include Madder, Watching for Dolphins, Caspar Hauser, The Pelt of Wasps, Something for the Ghosts (shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize), Collected Poems and most recently Nine Fathom Deep (all Bloodaxe). He is a translator of Hölderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. In 2003 his translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Lighter than Air (Bloodaxe) won the Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. He is also author of one novel, Davies (Bloodaxe) and Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton (Weidenfeld). This is his third collection of short stories, following Back at the Spike (Ryburn), and the highly acclaimed Under the Dam (Comma). He lives in Oxford, where he edits Modern Poetry in Translation with his wife Helen.

More about David's previous collection, Under the Dam here.

LISTEN NOW
Listen to David read the opening story, 'Beginning'.
Listen to David read the opening story to Under the Dam, 'The Loss'.