Description
Named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Story Collections of 2015 Featuring the story adapted into the Academy Award nominated film, 45 YEARS "I started reading these stories quietly, and then became obsessed, read them all fast, and started re-reading them again and again. They are gripping tales, but what is startling is the quality of the writing. Every sentence is both unpredictable and exactly what it should be." A.S. Byatt, The Guardian The first American publication by one of the greatest living fiction masters, In Another Country spans David Constantine's remarkable thirty-year career. Known for their pristine emotional clarity, their spare but intensely evocative dialogue, and their fearless exposures of the heart in moments of defiance, change, resistance, flight, isolation, and redemption, these stories demonstrate again and again Constantine's timeless and enduring appeal. David Constantine is an award-winning short story writer, poet, and translator. His collections of poetry include The Pelt of Wasps, Something for the Ghosts (shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize), Nine Fathom Deep, and Elder. He is the author of one novel, Davies, and has published four collections of short stories in the United Kingdom, including the winner of the 2013 Frank O'Connor Award, Tea at the Midland and Other Stories. He lives in Oxford, where, until 2012, he edited Modern Poetry in Translation with his wife Helen.
Co-op available Chapbooks distributed at BEA 2014; first part of 4 pre-pub chapbook series to key media and booksellers, w/copies to reps for distribution to accounts Possible blurbs: A.S. Byatt, Colm Toibin, Lydia Davis B&T flyer program Submission for B&N Discover Program Submission for ABA debut program Possible ARCs (if we get sponsorship space) at ABA Winter Institute Galleys for distribution by Nov. sales conference Participation in Consortium's Galley Box ARC program Advertisements in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Shelf Awareness, LRB, BEA Program 250-copy ARC mailing National Radio Campaign targeting All Things Considered, Weekend Edition National Print & Blog Campaign targeting Believer, Bookforum, Bookslut, Brooklyn Rail, Chatelaine, Chicago Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Contemporary Literature, Economist, Electric Literature, Elle, Harpers, HTMLGiant, Huffington Post, LA Times, LARB, Largehearted Boy, Little Star, Longest Chapter, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Marie Claire, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Ms, New Inquiry, New Orleans Times-Picayune, New York Times Book Review, New York Times Daily Arts, New Yorker/Page-Turner, NYRB, O: The Oprah Magazine, Open Letters Monthly, Paris Review, Philadelphia Inquiry, Quarterly Conversation, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Slate, The Millions, Village Voice, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post & more Story under consideration at The Paris Review; pitch to New Yorker Put forward for syndication in Bookslinger/Storyville/Electric Literature Promotion through www.biblioasis.com and social media Goodreads giveaways
About the Author
David Constantine is an award-winning short story writer, 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 Nine Fathom Deep. He is a translator of Hoelderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. In 2003 his translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Lighter than Air won the Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. He is also author of one novel, Davies, as well as Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton. He has published four collections of short stories in the UK, including Back at the Spike, Under the Dam, The Shieling and the winner of the 2013 Frank O'Connor Award, Tea at the Midland and Other Stories. He lives in Oxford, where until 2012 he edited Modern Poetry in Translation with his wife Helen.
Reviews
Praise for In Another Country"Constantine's stories ache with concern for the retreating, vulnerable, sacred natural world." New York Times Book Review "Revelatory ... [David Constantine] is always attuned to the interplay between the tangible and the invisible. His stories closely attend to the wonders of the habitable world what one character calls 'the earth's lovely phenomena,' while they map the inner kingdom of the mind, echoing the hidden cataracts of the characters' desires and regrets." Wall Street Journal "The diverse characters [of In Another Country] include ex-monks, shamed canons, prostitutes, squatters, successful businessmen, and university professors, but a common thread of silent suffering and dignity ties them all together. The tragic and the beautiful in each of their experiences is heightened by the author's impeccable eloquence and poetic imagery A brilliant selection." Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "[Constantine] has a remarkable ear for both poetic and common prose [H]is work is too beholden to the actual or possible to be classified as fantasy or allegory, but his stories plunge the reader so deeply into the boundary-less country of the human psyche that it feels wrong to describe them as examples of psychological realism ... That's one of the many messages embedded in the collection: that life is too messy, too mysterious and permeable, to fit into singular categories. It's not a new message, but it's rare to see it stated with such style and conviction." Toronto Star "[David Constantine's] world sometimes recalls those of Harold Pinter and Ian McEwan, in which the banal niceties of comfortable living dinners, funerals for colleagues, business trips seem to conceal great menace It's what goes unspoken in so many of these stories that seems so powerful An author who deserves serious consideration." Kirkus' Reviews "Enduringly powerful Constantine's great skill lies in his ability to create moments that feel not like authorial intrusions but rather fleeting recognitions, whether of insurmountable loneliness or inchoate hope." Henri Lipton, ZYZZYVA "After reading David Constantine's story 'In Another Country' ... I can't figure out why a U.S. press hasn't caught on to his work Thankfully, Biblioasis will publish a selection of his stories next year." Nicole Rudick, The Paris Review "There are writers for whom place is a key component of authorial sensibility Joyce had Dublin; Faulkner and Twain had their respective portions of Mississippi. David Constantine refuse[s] to restrict [his] settings to background scenery, choosing instead to fully inhabit the place in which [his] stories unfold Constantine's artistic vision, like the land he takes as his setting, is bleak and rugged In [his] universe, art, love and death are never very far apart." The Globe and Mail "... [I]t's the precision of David Constantine's prose that gets you first. His descriptions, his dialogue it's all so unnervingly exact, dropping you into scenes that are both immediately recognizable and profoundly unsettling." Beatrice "[S]adness and pity ... infuse much of this book, but the stories never suffer from a sense of sameness. That's because Constantine begins and ends stories in places few writers would imagine, and in between he shifts direction in ways few readers will expect." Star Tribune "Set on islands and coasts, furnished with the 'silver ladders' of streams, featuring wishing wells and even a cursing well, the virtuoso stories of David Constantine's In Another Country pulse with the sounds and rhythms of water, rhythms that draw characters and readers alike into uncommon and exceptionally profound emotional depths." Laurie Greer, Politics and Prose "I cried when I finished the title story, and I wandered about the landscapes and houses Constantine created thereafter. The depth of setting in the stories allows the reader to reflect on characters' relationship struggles in their homes or temporary dwellings, whether that means in a field, a book-filled house, or a cave. There is plight here, even if it sometimes appears small, because even the closest relationships we grow around us where we live are never definitively part of us and each character reacts to this in a different way." Todd Wellman, Boswell Book Company "A masterful touch The entire collection comprises richly rewarding, unforgettable stories gathered from over four books and two decades of work." Scout Magazine "[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling." Sabotage Reviews Praise for David Constantine "Rich and allusive and unashamedly moving." The Independent "Spellbinding." The Irish Times "An uneasy blend of the exquisite and the everyday ... the beatific, the ordinary, the rebarbative even, are almost indistinguishable ... intelligent and well-turned." The Times Literary Supplement "[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling." Frank Lawton, Sabotage Reviews "Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form." The Reader
Praise for In Another Country "Constantine's stories ache with concern for the retreating, vulnerable, sacred natural world."-New York Times Book Review "Revelatory ... [David Constantine] is always attuned to the interplay between the tangible and the invisible. His stories closely attend to the wonders of the habitable world-what one character calls 'the earth's lovely phenomena,' while they map the inner kingdom of the mind, echoing the hidden cataracts of the characters' desires and regrets."-Wall Street Journal "The diverse characters [of In Another Country] include ex-monks, shamed canons, prostitutes, squatters, successful businessmen, and university professors, but a common thread of silent suffering and dignity ties them all together. The tragic and the beautiful in each of their experiences is heightened by the author's impeccable eloquence and poetic imagery ... A brilliant selection."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "[Constantine] has a remarkable ear for both poetic and common prose ... [H]is work is too beholden to the actual or possible to be classified as fantasy or allegory, but his stories plunge the reader so deeply into the boundary-less country of the human psyche that it feels wrong to describe them as examples of psychological realism ... That's one of the many messages embedded in the collection: that life is too messy, too mysterious and permeable, to fit into singular categories. It's not a new message, but it's rare to see it stated with such style and conviction."-Toronto Star "[David Constantine's] world sometimes recalls those of Harold Pinter and Ian McEwan, in which the banal niceties of comfortable living-dinners, funerals for colleagues, business trips-seem to conceal great menace ... It's what goes unspoken in so many of these stories that seems so powerful ... An author who deserves serious consideration."-Kirkus' Reviews "Enduringly powerful ... Constantine's great skill lies in his ability to create moments that feel not like authorial intrusions but rather fleeting recognitions, whether of insurmountable loneliness or inchoate hope."-Henri Lipton, ZYZZYVA "After reading David Constantine's story `In Another Country' ... I can't figure out why a U.S. press hasn't caught on to his work ... Thankfully, Biblioasis will publish a selection of his stories next year."-Nicole Rudick, The Paris Review "There are writers for whom place is a key component of authorial sensibility ... Joyce had Dublin; Faulkner and Twain had their respective portions of Mississippi. David Constantine ... refuse[s] to restrict [his] settings to background scenery, choosing instead to fully inhabit the place in which [his] stories unfold ... Constantine's artistic vision, like the land he takes as his setting, is bleak and rugged ... In [his] universe, art, love and death are never very far apart."-The Globe and Mail "... [I]t's the precision of David Constantine's prose that gets you first. His descriptions, his dialogue-it's all so unnervingly exact, dropping you into scenes that are both immediately recognizable and profoundly unsettling."-Beatrice "[S]adness and pity ... infuse much of this book, but the stories never suffer from a sense of sameness. That's because Constantine begins and ends stories in places few writers would imagine, and in between he shifts direction in ways few readers will expect."-Star Tribune "Set on islands and coasts, furnished with the `silver ladders' of streams, featuring wishing wells and even a cursing well, the virtuoso stories of David Constantine's In Another Country pulse with the sounds and rhythms of water, rhythms that draw characters and readers alike into uncommon and exceptionally profound emotional depths."-Laurie Greer, Politics and Prose "I cried when I finished the title story, and I wandered about the landscapes and houses Constantine created thereafter. The depth of setting in the stories allows the reader to reflect on characters' relationship struggles in their homes or temporary dwellings, whether that means in a field, a book-filled house, or a cave. There is plight here, even if it sometimes appears small, because even the closest relationships we grow around us where we live are never definitively part of us-and each character reacts to this in a different way."-Todd Wellman, Boswell Book Company "A masterful touch ... The entire collection comprises richly rewarding, unforgettable stories gathered from over four books and two decades of work."-Scout Magazine "[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling."-Sabotage Reviews Praise for David Constantine "Rich and allusive and unashamedly moving."-The Independent "Spellbinding."-The Irish Times "An uneasy blend of the exquisite and the everyday ... the beatific, the ordinary, the rebarbative even, are almost indistinguishable ... intelligent and well-turned."-The Times Literary Supplement "[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling."-Frank Lawton, Sabotage Reviews "Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form."-The Reader
Book Information
ISBN 9781771960175
Author David Constantine
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Biblioasis
Publisher Biblioasis
Weight(grams) 482g
Co-op available Chapbooks distributed at BEA 2014; first part of 4 pre-pub chapbook series to key media and booksellers, w/copies to reps for distribution to accounts Possible blurbs: A.S. Byatt, Colm Toibin, Lydia Davis B&T flyer program Submission for B&N Discover Program Submission for ABA debut program Possible ARCs (if we get sponsorship space) at ABA Winter Institute Galleys for distribution by Nov. sales conference Participation in Consortium's Galley Box ARC program Advertisements in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Shelf Awareness, LRB, BEA Program 250-copy ARC mailing National Radio Campaign targeting All Things Considered, Weekend Edition National Print & Blog Campaign targeting Believer, Bookforum, Bookslut, Brooklyn Rail, Chatelaine, Chicago Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Contemporary Literature, Economist, Electric Literature, Elle, Harpers, HTMLGiant, Huffington Post, LA Times, LARB, Largehearted Boy, Little Star, Longest Chapter, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Marie Claire, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Ms, New Inquiry, New Orleans Times-Picayune, New York Times Book Review, New York Times Daily Arts, New Yorker/Page-Turner, NYRB, O: The Oprah Magazine, Open Letters Monthly, Paris Review, Philadelphia Inquiry, Quarterly Conversation, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Slate, The Millions, Village Voice, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post & more Story under consideration at The Paris Review; pitch to New Yorker Put forward for syndication in Bookslinger/Storyville/Electric Literature Promotion through www.biblioasis.com and social media Goodreads giveaways
About the Author
David Constantine is an award-winning short story writer, 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 Nine Fathom Deep. He is a translator of Hoelderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. In 2003 his translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Lighter than Air won the Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. He is also author of one novel, Davies, as well as Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton. He has published four collections of short stories in the UK, including Back at the Spike, Under the Dam, The Shieling and the winner of the 2013 Frank O'Connor Award, Tea at the Midland and Other Stories. He lives in Oxford, where until 2012 he edited Modern Poetry in Translation with his wife Helen.
Reviews
Praise for In Another Country"Constantine's stories ache with concern for the retreating, vulnerable, sacred natural world." New York Times Book Review "Revelatory ... [David Constantine] is always attuned to the interplay between the tangible and the invisible. His stories closely attend to the wonders of the habitable world what one character calls 'the earth's lovely phenomena,' while they map the inner kingdom of the mind, echoing the hidden cataracts of the characters' desires and regrets." Wall Street Journal "The diverse characters [of In Another Country] include ex-monks, shamed canons, prostitutes, squatters, successful businessmen, and university professors, but a common thread of silent suffering and dignity ties them all together. The tragic and the beautiful in each of their experiences is heightened by the author's impeccable eloquence and poetic imagery A brilliant selection." Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "[Constantine] has a remarkable ear for both poetic and common prose [H]is work is too beholden to the actual or possible to be classified as fantasy or allegory, but his stories plunge the reader so deeply into the boundary-less country of the human psyche that it feels wrong to describe them as examples of psychological realism ... That's one of the many messages embedded in the collection: that life is too messy, too mysterious and permeable, to fit into singular categories. It's not a new message, but it's rare to see it stated with such style and conviction." Toronto Star "[David Constantine's] world sometimes recalls those of Harold Pinter and Ian McEwan, in which the banal niceties of comfortable living dinners, funerals for colleagues, business trips seem to conceal great menace It's what goes unspoken in so many of these stories that seems so powerful An author who deserves serious consideration." Kirkus' Reviews "Enduringly powerful Constantine's great skill lies in his ability to create moments that feel not like authorial intrusions but rather fleeting recognitions, whether of insurmountable loneliness or inchoate hope." Henri Lipton, ZYZZYVA "After reading David Constantine's story 'In Another Country' ... I can't figure out why a U.S. press hasn't caught on to his work Thankfully, Biblioasis will publish a selection of his stories next year." Nicole Rudick, The Paris Review "There are writers for whom place is a key component of authorial sensibility Joyce had Dublin; Faulkner and Twain had their respective portions of Mississippi. David Constantine refuse[s] to restrict [his] settings to background scenery, choosing instead to fully inhabit the place in which [his] stories unfold Constantine's artistic vision, like the land he takes as his setting, is bleak and rugged In [his] universe, art, love and death are never very far apart." The Globe and Mail "... [I]t's the precision of David Constantine's prose that gets you first. His descriptions, his dialogue it's all so unnervingly exact, dropping you into scenes that are both immediately recognizable and profoundly unsettling." Beatrice "[S]adness and pity ... infuse much of this book, but the stories never suffer from a sense of sameness. That's because Constantine begins and ends stories in places few writers would imagine, and in between he shifts direction in ways few readers will expect." Star Tribune "Set on islands and coasts, furnished with the 'silver ladders' of streams, featuring wishing wells and even a cursing well, the virtuoso stories of David Constantine's In Another Country pulse with the sounds and rhythms of water, rhythms that draw characters and readers alike into uncommon and exceptionally profound emotional depths." Laurie Greer, Politics and Prose "I cried when I finished the title story, and I wandered about the landscapes and houses Constantine created thereafter. The depth of setting in the stories allows the reader to reflect on characters' relationship struggles in their homes or temporary dwellings, whether that means in a field, a book-filled house, or a cave. There is plight here, even if it sometimes appears small, because even the closest relationships we grow around us where we live are never definitively part of us and each character reacts to this in a different way." Todd Wellman, Boswell Book Company "A masterful touch The entire collection comprises richly rewarding, unforgettable stories gathered from over four books and two decades of work." Scout Magazine "[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling." Sabotage Reviews Praise for David Constantine "Rich and allusive and unashamedly moving." The Independent "Spellbinding." The Irish Times "An uneasy blend of the exquisite and the everyday ... the beatific, the ordinary, the rebarbative even, are almost indistinguishable ... intelligent and well-turned." The Times Literary Supplement "[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling." Frank Lawton, Sabotage Reviews "Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form." The Reader
Praise for In Another Country "Constantine's stories ache with concern for the retreating, vulnerable, sacred natural world."-New York Times Book Review "Revelatory ... [David Constantine] is always attuned to the interplay between the tangible and the invisible. His stories closely attend to the wonders of the habitable world-what one character calls 'the earth's lovely phenomena,' while they map the inner kingdom of the mind, echoing the hidden cataracts of the characters' desires and regrets."-Wall Street Journal "The diverse characters [of In Another Country] include ex-monks, shamed canons, prostitutes, squatters, successful businessmen, and university professors, but a common thread of silent suffering and dignity ties them all together. The tragic and the beautiful in each of their experiences is heightened by the author's impeccable eloquence and poetic imagery ... A brilliant selection."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "[Constantine] has a remarkable ear for both poetic and common prose ... [H]is work is too beholden to the actual or possible to be classified as fantasy or allegory, but his stories plunge the reader so deeply into the boundary-less country of the human psyche that it feels wrong to describe them as examples of psychological realism ... That's one of the many messages embedded in the collection: that life is too messy, too mysterious and permeable, to fit into singular categories. It's not a new message, but it's rare to see it stated with such style and conviction."-Toronto Star "[David Constantine's] world sometimes recalls those of Harold Pinter and Ian McEwan, in which the banal niceties of comfortable living-dinners, funerals for colleagues, business trips-seem to conceal great menace ... It's what goes unspoken in so many of these stories that seems so powerful ... An author who deserves serious consideration."-Kirkus' Reviews "Enduringly powerful ... Constantine's great skill lies in his ability to create moments that feel not like authorial intrusions but rather fleeting recognitions, whether of insurmountable loneliness or inchoate hope."-Henri Lipton, ZYZZYVA "After reading David Constantine's story `In Another Country' ... I can't figure out why a U.S. press hasn't caught on to his work ... Thankfully, Biblioasis will publish a selection of his stories next year."-Nicole Rudick, The Paris Review "There are writers for whom place is a key component of authorial sensibility ... Joyce had Dublin; Faulkner and Twain had their respective portions of Mississippi. David Constantine ... refuse[s] to restrict [his] settings to background scenery, choosing instead to fully inhabit the place in which [his] stories unfold ... Constantine's artistic vision, like the land he takes as his setting, is bleak and rugged ... In [his] universe, art, love and death are never very far apart."-The Globe and Mail "... [I]t's the precision of David Constantine's prose that gets you first. His descriptions, his dialogue-it's all so unnervingly exact, dropping you into scenes that are both immediately recognizable and profoundly unsettling."-Beatrice "[S]adness and pity ... infuse much of this book, but the stories never suffer from a sense of sameness. That's because Constantine begins and ends stories in places few writers would imagine, and in between he shifts direction in ways few readers will expect."-Star Tribune "Set on islands and coasts, furnished with the `silver ladders' of streams, featuring wishing wells and even a cursing well, the virtuoso stories of David Constantine's In Another Country pulse with the sounds and rhythms of water, rhythms that draw characters and readers alike into uncommon and exceptionally profound emotional depths."-Laurie Greer, Politics and Prose "I cried when I finished the title story, and I wandered about the landscapes and houses Constantine created thereafter. The depth of setting in the stories allows the reader to reflect on characters' relationship struggles in their homes or temporary dwellings, whether that means in a field, a book-filled house, or a cave. There is plight here, even if it sometimes appears small, because even the closest relationships we grow around us where we live are never definitively part of us-and each character reacts to this in a different way."-Todd Wellman, Boswell Book Company "A masterful touch ... The entire collection comprises richly rewarding, unforgettable stories gathered from over four books and two decades of work."-Scout Magazine "[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling."-Sabotage Reviews Praise for David Constantine "Rich and allusive and unashamedly moving."-The Independent "Spellbinding."-The Irish Times "An uneasy blend of the exquisite and the everyday ... the beatific, the ordinary, the rebarbative even, are almost indistinguishable ... intelligent and well-turned."-The Times Literary Supplement "[A] work of graceful economy and power, [In Another Country] displays the very best of Constantine ... The prose is dream-like and incantatory, in which there lingers something undefined and unsettling."-Frank Lawton, Sabotage Reviews "Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form."-The Reader
Book Information
ISBN 9781771960175
Author David Constantine
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Biblioasis
Publisher Biblioasis
Weight(grams) 482g
