David Constantine's stories freeze-frame lives just at the moment when the past breaks the surface, or when the present, like the dam of the title, collapses under its own weight.

A girl's body re-appears in the ice where she fell 50 years before - melting the life of the lover who survived her.

A tourist staggers through an Athens marketplace transformed into a vision of Hell.

During a speech a businessman feels his soul abandoning him.

Constantine's landscapes are as alive and fluid as his prose, which swells and surges like unsettled water throughout. His characters are solitary figures drawn against stark and disquieting backdrops. Whether oppressed or emancipated by their surroundings, many seem to be seeking a kind of asylum from themselves or the unsustainable pressures on their lives.

"This is a haunting collection filled with delicate clarity. Constantine has a sure grasp of the fear and fragility within his characters." A. L. Kennedy