Books published by Comma Press

These are not fictions. Nor are they testimonies from some distant, brutal past, but the frighteningly common experiences of Europe s new underclass its refugees. While those with citizenship enjoy basic human rights (like the right not to be detained without charge for more than 14 days), people seeking asylum can be suspended for years in Kafka-esque uncertainty. Here, poets and novelists retell the stories of individuals who have direct experience of Britain s policy of indefinite immigration detention. Presenting their experiences anonymously, as modern day counterparts to the pilgrims stories in Chaucers Canterbury Tales, this book offers rare, intimate glimpses into otherwise untold suffering.

Throughout his career, M. John Harrison's writing has defied categorisation, building worlds both unreal and all-too real, overlapping and interlocking with each other. His stories are replete with fissures and portals into parallel dimensions, unidentified countries and lost lands. But more important than the places they point to are the obsessions that drive the people who so believe in them, characters who spend their lives hunting for, and haunted by, clues and maps that speak to the possibility of somewhere else. This selection of stories, drawn from over 50 years of writing, bears witness to that desire for difference: whether following backstreet occultists, amateur philosophers, down-and-outs or refugees, we see our relationship with 'the other' in microscopic detail, and share in Harrison's rejection of the idea that the world, or our understanding of it, could ever be settled.

The BBC NSSA is one of the most prestigious prizes for a single short story, with the winning author receiving GBP15,000, and four further shortlisted authors GBP600 each.

All Walls Collapse brings together 12 acclaimed writers from across the world to explore the impact of walls, barriers, partitions and borders on people's lives, as well as their communities.

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.

In Safely Gathered In, Sarah Schofield probes at the heart of what forms us and what we, in turn, form. The stories collected here expose the spaces that words often fail to reach and examine how objects - both manmade and natural - can reflect the darkest manifestations of grief and disconnection.

Bringing together fiction from celebrated writers, The Book of Barcelona is an anthology of short stories charting the social and and cultural change of Barcelona over the last fifty years, creating a literary map of the city.

The stories shortlisted for the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University take place in liminal spaces - their characters find themselves in transit, travelling along flight paths, train lines and roads, or in moments where new opportunities or directions suddenly seem possible.

Seventy years after the adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UK is guilty of undermining the very principles of asylum, inhumanely detaining those seeking protection and ushering in sweeping changes that threaten to punish refugees at every turn. But the UK's immigration system is not alone in committing such breaches of human rights. The fourth volume of Refugee Tales explores our present international environment, combining author re-tellings with first-hand accounts of individuals who have been detained across the world.

Iceland is a land of stories; from the epic sagas of its mythic past, to its claim today of being home to more writers than anywhere in the world. Reykjavik, a fishing-village-turned-metropolis, has been both revered and reviled by Icelanders, with tension rising between the city and the surrounding countryside, its rural past and urban present.

Ramallah, the de facto capital of the West Bank, hemmed in and suffocated by the Occupation as the Oslo Peace Accords have failed. The stories collected here showcase the resilience and humour of its people, who continue to live through countless sieges, and yet still find the time, and resourcefulness, to create.

In this unique anthology, British authors have been charged with resurrecting the folk heroes of British protest history.

This anthology re-examines America's foreign policy legacy through stories that explore the human cost of these interventions on foreign soil, by writers from that soil.

Bringing together fiction from celebrated writers, The Book of Venice is an anthology of short stories charting the social and and cultural change of Venice over the last fifty years, creating a literary map of the city.

Traversing the different neighbourhoods and districts, the stories gathered here attempt to capture the essence of contemporary Jakarta and its writing, as well as the ever-changing landscape of the fastest-sinking city in the world.