David J Constantine

Driven to abscond from the pressures of everyday life, the characters in this collection turn to strange ideas, distant places, and private languages in search of escape. At times the characters appear absurd, like the vicar who strikes up a conversation with the devil, and at other times they seem ...

In the middle of a speech a businessman realises his soul has just left his body. In an Athens marketplace, a jealous lover finds himself staggering through a vision of hell. High in the Alps, a young woman’s body re-appears in the glacier, perfectly preserved, where she fell 50 years before.Enterin...

Faust is ever frustrated in his quest for knowledge and the true essence of life. By this, he attracts the attention of the Devil, Mephistopheles. Faust makes a deal with the Devil for more knowledge and power, agreeing to give his soul to Mephistopheles on the moment that Faust reaches the zenith o...

David Constantine is one the finest poets writing in English. His poetry stands outside the current literary climate, and like the work of the European poets who have nourished him, it is informed by a profoundly humane vision of the world. Its mood is often one of unease, elegiac or comically edged...

In this first collection of short stories from a highly regarded poet, a girl's body reappears in the ice where she fell 50 years earlier, a businessman watches his soul abandon him as he makes a speech, and a tourist staggers through Athens as it transforms into a vision of hell. Depicting solitary...

Filled with characters that are often delicately caught in moments of defiance, disregarding their age, their family, or the prevailing political winds, this collection finds a space for resistance and taking an honest delight in it. Alphonse, having broken out of an old people’s home, changed his n...

To the woman watching they looked like grace itself, the heart and soul of which is freedom. It pleased her particularly that they were attached by invisible strings to colourful curves of rapidly moving air. How clean and clever that was! You throw up something like a handkerchief, you tether it an...

Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Story Collections of 2015Featuring the story adapted into the Academy Award nominated film, 45 YEARS, starring Charlotte Rampling"I started reading these stories quietly, and then became obsessed, read them all fast, and started re-reading them again and again. They are...