Singing a Man to Death by Matthew Francis

Singing a Man to Death, a collection of short stories, is notable for its range, sophistication, and readability. The fictions cover a range of milieus from England to Pacific islands to semi-mythical territories; ages from the contemporary to early medieval; and a range of ‘realisms’ from the naturalistic to the supernatural to the magic-realism. Displaying linguistic range and richness, characters are stranded in or confronted by disorientating milieus. …A strong collection.

– This is story-telling at its best: innovative, engaging, accessible, yet layered with allusion and wit, these compelling stories are completely satisfying. A dazzling display of what a short story can achieve.

Christopher Meredith

Matthew Francis’s most recent publication, Mandeville (Faber, 2008), a collection of poems inspired by the medieval travel-writer Sir John Mandeville, received outstanding reviews in The Observer and The Guardian and his previous collection, Whereabouts was also highly reviewed, whilst Dragons (Faber, 2001) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and The Welsh Book of the Year Award and Blizzard (Faber, 1996) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and winner of the Southern Arts Prize. He is also the author of a critical studies and a novel WHOM (Bloomsbury, 1989), and is editor of W.S. Graham’s New Collected Poems (Faber, 2004). He is currently working on a novel set in Wales and London in the seventeenth century, as well as a new collection of poems.