Judas

Overview

Judas Iscariot—one of the Bible's most notorious characters—comes to life in this dramatic and thought-provoking new collection of poems by Damian Walford Davies. Fully aware of how ancient enmities shape modern conflicts, the author draws on 20 centuries of representations of Judas to set out a tale that challenges our preconceived notions of holiness and betrayal.

Reviews

"An apocryphal tour de force, Damian Walford Davies's Judas is a long-overdue mythobiography of the infamous Iscariot. With dazzling linguistic precision, mordant wit and unflinching humanity, these poems turn the familiar story inside out, exposing not just the many facets it has accrued from two thousand years' telling, but how the veil between past and present, love and betrayal, magic and miracle is fine, and easily torn. Walk with this shadowy figure past the tombs, soldiers and late-night kofta stands of a shimmering, timeless Jerusalem, and be prepared to hear the other side." —Tiffany Atkinson

Author Biography

Damian Walford Davies is a professor of English and the head of the School of English, Communication & Philosophy at Cardiff University. He is a poet and the author of Ancestral Houses: The Lost Mansions of Wales, Poets' Graves, Suit of Lights, and Witch. He has also published widely on Romantic-period literature and culture, his latest study being Cartographies of Culture: New Geographies of Welsh Writing in English.