Death Goes Better With Coca-Cola

Originally published in 1967, Dave Godfrey’s debut collection features stories about hunting — in Florida, in Africa, and in northern Ontario. They are about the interplay of gun and subway, decoy and stock market, guide and draft dodger. But they are more than just stories about hunting. Death Goes Better with Coca-Cola is a powerful example of the idiosyncratic imagination of a writer who broke new ground in fiction. It is a seminal collection by one of Canada’s most influential literary figures and it is a must-read for those who want to understand Canada’s literary landscape, past and present.

Dave Godfrey was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1938. A writer, publisher, and academic, Godfrey published three works of fiction: the novel The New Ancestors, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the short story collections Death Goes Better with Coca-Cola and Dark Must Yield. He was co-founder of both House of Anansi and New Press, and ran Press Porcépic with his wife, writer Ellen Godfrey. He studied at the University of Toronto, Iowa, and Stanford, and taught literature at the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria. Dave Godfrey died in Victoria, B.C., in 2015.