Search results for ""Author David Constantine""

The characters in David Constantine’s fourth collection are delicately caught in moments of defiance. These bewitching, finely-wrought stories give us permission to escape, side-step the inexorable traffic of our lives, and take possession of the moment by marking out a space for resistance.

Read more less

The characters in David Constantine’s fifth collection are all in pursuit of sanctuary; the violence and mendacity of the outside world presses in from all sides – be it the ritualised brutality suffered by children at a Catholic orphanage, or the harrowing videos shared among refugees of an atrocity ‘back home’. In each case, the characters withdraw into themselves, sometimes abandoning language altogether, until something breaks and they can retreat no further. In Constantine’s luminous prose, these stories capture such moments in all their clarity; moments when an entire life seems to hang in the balance, the past’s betrayals exposed, its ghosts dragged out into the daylight; moments in which the possibility of defiance and redemption is everything.

Read more less

The stories of David Constantine are unlike any others. His characters possess you instantly, making you see the world as they do – sometimes as exiles, driven into isolation by convictions that even they don’t fully understand; sometimes as carriers of an unspoken but unbearable weight. The things they pursue, or evade, are often unseen and at a distance – like the perfectly preserved body of a woman in the title story, waiting to be discovered in the receding ice of a Swiss glacier. These tokens of the past, or future, haunt Constantine’s characters, but the landscapes that produce them also offer salvation, places of refuge or small treasures to take solace in – like the piece of driftwood a beachcomber chooses to carve into his idea of perfection. Gathering together stories from over two decades of writing, this selection demonstrates why Constantine has been hailed as ‘perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form’. Their bewitching and urgent language is at one and the same time unsettling and ‘strong enough to help’. Featuring the story, 'In Another Country', that inspired the motion picture, 45 Years.

Read more less

The eight stories in this volume offer a varied and representative collection of twentieth century German authors from a range of political and cultural backgrounds. Styles include the non-fictional manner of Kluge's montage technique and the contrasting classical storytelling of Penzoldt.With reading notes and parallel texts in German and English, this anthology is valuable to the German student of English as well as the English student of German. Reflecting trends in German literature, the stories have been selected for their quality as well as their readability, and will enhance the appreciation of both languages.

Read more less

A New York Times Notable Book 2016 An October Indie Next List “Great Reads” Pick After the death of her beloved husband, Katrin, a literary biographer, copes with the loss by writing his personal history. While researching the letters and journals he left behind, however, she comes to the devastating conclusion that his life before their marriage was far richer than the one they shared. To understand and recreate the period of his greatest happiness—hitch-hiking through France as a young man, madly in love with his companion, a French girl named Monique—Katrin embarks on a heartbreaking journey to discover the man she never fully knew. David Constantine is an award-winning short story writer, poet, and, translator. The title story of his North American debut collection of short fiction, In Another Country: Selected Stories (Biblioasis, 2015) was adapted into the Academy Award–nominated feature film 45 Years. He is the author of one previous novel, Davies, as well as four collections of short stories in the United Kingdom, and five collections of poetry. He lives in Oxford, England, where until 2012 he edited Modern Poetry in Translation with his wife Helen.

Read more less

Described as one of the as one of the UK's finest short story writers, Constantine intricately interweaves fictional characters and events with the real to create new ways of seeing and connecting our past, present and possible futures. With extraordinary patience and precision, these stories centre on moments, conversations, meetings that feel like small details picked out from a larger tapestry. From the academic in Paris, researching and processing the atrocities of the 1871 Paris Commune, to the young biographer who tries to befriend the ailing poet Hoelderlin, the characters in this collection are united by an urge for connection, a desire to better know themselves - and the world around them - to counteract a loss of hope and belonging.

Read more less

Title story adapted into Academy Award nominated feature film 45 YEARS; screened nation-wide, excellent cross-promotional coverage mentioning author + story Movie tie-in cover art = IFC / Sundance Selects poster image Original trade cloth version sold out of its initial 3,000 copy print run Named among Kirkus Reviews' Best Story Collections of 2015; critically acclaimed by NYTBR, WSJ, PW (starred review), and other major outlets Published alongside North American novel debut (see The Life-Writer) Previously known as a poet and translator, he began publishing fiction later in his career, and his reputation as a masterful short story writer has rocketed in the UK since The Shieling appeared in 2009, then the BBC award in 2010, and the Frank O'Connor in 2013 Pulls together the best material from his 30+ year career

Read more less

In this sequel to Faust, Mephistopheles takes Faust on a journey through ancient Greek mythology, conjuring for him the insurpassably beautiful Helen of Troy, as well as the classical gods. Faust falls in love with and marries Helen, embodying for Goethe his 'imaginative longing to join poetically the Romantic Medievalism of the germanic West to the classical genius of the Greeks'. Further to the themes of redemption and salvation in this great drama, are Goethe's eerie premonitions of modern phenomena such as inflation and the creation of life by scientific synthesis.

Read more less

A lively and inventive anthology of new poetry.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

In the Footsteps of the Gods traces the ways in which the constantly changing ideal image of ancient Greece, its art, politics and culture, inspired those who travelled there. Gladiators and goddesses, philosophers and poets, epic battles and romantic landscapes: the classical world has for centuries captivated and inspired the west. But what provoked the shift from the western world's love-affair with classical Rome and its manifestation in the Renaissance, to the Hellenic world? The decisive switch in focus and taste from Rome to Greece began in the 17th century, when a succession of travellers - mainly from France and England - journeyed to Greece and what is now Turkey and rediscovered the Hellenic world. With lively accounts of their adventurous journeys and vivid descriptions of what they saw, discovered, collected and published about the remains of ancient Greece, In the Footsteps of the Gods reveals the extraordinary effects that these travellers' accounts had on the poets and scholars of the west, who in turn were influential in creating the idea and ideal of Greece, which became such a powerful force in the arts and politics of the 18th and early 19th centuries. At the heart of the book is, in the words of the classicist, Richard Stoneman, 'a poet's vision of Greece'.

Read more less

Aiming in his translation for an English haunted and affected by the strangeness of the original, David Constantine offers a wealth of Heinrich von Kleist's key writings in this collection, the most ambitious of its kind.

Read more less

Aiming in his translation for an English haunted and affected by the strangeness of the original, David Constantine offers a wealth of Heinrich von Kleist's key writings in this collection, the most ambitious of its kind.

Read more less

'I have so much and my feeling for her devours everything, I have so much and without her everything is nothing.' The Sorrows of Young Werther propelled Goethe to instant fame when it first appeared in 1774. Goethe drew on his own unhappy experiences to tell the story of Werther, a young man tormented by his love for Lotte, a tender-hearted girl who is promised to someone else. Overwhelmed by his feelings, Werther begins to see only one way to escape from his anguish. Goethe's story of a sensitive young artist alienated from society channelled the Romantic sensibility of the day and led to a wave of imitations. Werther's searching introspection and the passionate intensity with which he bares his soul have an immediacy that is all the more powerful for being expressed in letters; charting the course of his emotions, they give added drama to the unfolding account. David Constantine's new translation captures the novel's lyric clarity, and his introduction and notes illuminate Goethe's achievement. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Read more less

This issue will be largely given over to a collaboration with 'Poetry Parnassus' - the Southbank Centre's celebration of the 2012 London Olympics. Poets from all participating countries will be invited to London and MPT will publish a selection of translations of their poems. Poetry Parnassus marks the first time that so many poets from so many parts of the planet have convereged in one place; it is a monumental poetic happening worthy of the spirit and history of the Olympics. 'My hunch is this will be the biggest poetry event ever - a truly global coming together of poets' (Simon Armitage, the poet behind the idea and Artist in Residence at Southbank Centre) The issue will be enhanced with other translated poems, brief essays, anecdotes and images concerned, in whatever fashion, with the Games (ancient or modern) or with Parnassus, home of the Muses. Parnassus was a sacred site for the whole Greek world; Delphi, below that mountain, was 'the navel of the earth'; for the duration of the Olympics a truce was declared so that athletes could come and go safely. The modern Olympics are world - wide. MPT 3/17 will be just as extensive and various.

Read more less

Even in Germany, the scope and force of Bertolt Brecht’s poetry did not become apparent until long after his death and today, many of his more than 2,000 poems have never appeared in English. Love Poems, the first volume in a monumental undertaking by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate his poetic legacy into English, positions Brecht not only as one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century but also as a fiercely creative twentieth-century poet, one of the best in German literature. With a foreword by his daughter; Love Poems features 78 astonishing and deeply personal love poems that reveal Brecht as lover and love poet whose struggle to keep faith, hope and love alive during desperate times represents the essence of human relationships.

Read more less

Even in Germany, the scope and force of Bertolt Brecht’s poetry did not become apparent until long after his death and today, many of his more than 2,000 poems have never appeared in English. Love Poems, the first volume in a monumental undertaking by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate his poetic legacy into English, positions Brecht not only as one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century but also as a fiercely creative twentieth-century poet, one of the best in German literature. With a foreword by his daughter; Love Poems features 78 astonishing and deeply personal love poems that reveal Brecht as lover and love poet whose struggle to keep faith, hope and love alive during desperate times represents the essence of human relationships.

Read more less

Goethe's Faust reworks the late-medieval myth of Dr Faust, a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract or wager with the devil, Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seek to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last for ever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephisto and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe's great work the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a life beyond his study and - in rejuvenated form - winning the love of the charming and beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire and self-delusion, Faust, served by the devil, heads inexorably towards destruction.

Read more less

In Elective Affinities Goethe conducts an experiment with the lives of people who are living badly. Charlotte and Eduard, aristocracts with little to occupy them, invite Ottilie and the Captain into their lives; against morality, good sense, and conscious volition all four are drawn into relationships as inexorably as if they were substances in a chemical equation. The novel asks whether we have free will or not; more disturbingly, it confronts its characters with the monstrous consequences of their repression of any real life in themselves. Goethe wrote Elective Affinities when he was sixty and long established as Germany's literary giant. He remained an uneasy and scandalous figure, none the less, and readers of Elective Affinities were profoundly disturbed by its penetrating study of marriage and passion. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Read more less