Terroir

“He knew the meaning of terroir. It was the land and everything that had happened to it. Present, past and future. Everything that had and could happen.”

Terroir is the new short story collection from poet and short fiction writer Graham Mort, whose work has won many awards, including the Bridport Prize for short fiction, The Short Fiction international short story prize and the Edge Hill Prize, which was awarded for his first short story collection from Seren, Touch.

Terroir extends the themes of Touch into new areas, ranging through historic periods as well as across geographic space and a disturbing moral spectrum. From England to Europe, Africa to South America, this collection explores intense, often fraught and transgressive situations. Parenthood, love aff sexual provocation, forms of violence and dreams of liberty form elements in stories where terror, terroir, and the undertow of history shape events.

A rising star of winemaking understands his craft but oversteps the boundaries; a father taking his son on a day trip strays into quicksand; an academic lives a darkly secret life; an ex-pat worker in Uganda is haunted by uncanny echoes of his past; an inmate in a night-time asylum relives his traumatic childhood in old age.

Sensitively told and beautifully written, these stories bring fresh perspectives to our place in the world and how that world shapes us.

Praise for Touch by the same author.

‘The best collection of short stories in recent years. Probably longer.’

                                                                            Tom Vowler.