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."

A shattered Judas Iscariot – that byword for betrayal – tells his own story in Damian Walford Davies compelling and finely wrought collection. We follow Judas over the course of five days as he moves through first-century Jerusalem trying to make sense of the bewildering events surrounding the life and execution of Jesus. But this is a man for whom the future is as real as his anguished and traumatized present, and for whom the Arab-Israeli conflict is as urgent as the tension between the Romans and Jews.

Emphasising our compulsion to create, and challenge, gospel truths, Judas gives voice to man caught up in the promise and violence of history.