One could not imagine a more apt title for Ian Colford’s amazing work of fiction than Evidence.

Firstly, the book, a collection of linked short stories, is evidence that Colford is a graceful and sophisticated creator of fiction.

Secondly, the stories cause us to gather evidence to assemble the reality of the life of the narrator, Kostandin Bitri.

"Everything the writer sets down on the page is evidence. It adds up and you make of it what you can and you draw conclusions. I knew that the book I’d written had gaps, that the evidence was incomplete but that only added to the appeal of using that word as a title because people often base conclusions on incomplete information, and yet hold fast to them. I wanted to write a book that had ambiguity at its core, that tempted the reader to make judgments and then forced the reader to question those judgments. Perhaps the evidence is faulty. Who can say for sure?" Colford said during an email interview.

For transparency’s sake, it should be mentioned, I am thanked in the book for championing Colford’s writing. For years (along with many others) I have read Colford’s unpublished work, including novels, and wondered why he did not have a book published (though his short fiction has been published in many journals) and lauded, as he so justly deserves.

So the success of Evidence, Colford’s first book, has placed the author where he should be — on award shortlists and on Globe and Mail journalist Jim Bartley’s Top 5 First Fiction Books of 2008 list.

Evidence has racked up the following awards and nominations:

• the 2009 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award;

• silver medal for the Independent Publisher Book Award;

• shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award;

• shortlisted for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award

Colford has a day job in which he is surrounded by words before he heads home to craft his own. He is assistant university librarian for collections development at Dalhousie’s Killam Library.

While Colford can be relied upon to dazzle with his prose, Kostandin Bitri is an unreliable narrator, a shapeshifter, an enigma. Essentially he is both a witness to and a victim of much of what is happening in the world — poverty, displacement and persecution.

Bitri’s life is revealed in linked, but not chronological, stories. In the email interview, Colford discussed the process of structuring the book. "The stories came to me in episodes . . . and I wrote them as they came. During the writing there was never any question of linking them together in a linear fashion, or of imposing a novelistic structure upon them . . . this is probably because the stories didn’t come to me in a linear or chronological sequence.

"Later, I was able to step back and speculate about doing this or that to make it into a novel but decided against it because the episodes seemed to already possess an intrinsic unity."

And he admits that trying to fashion the stories into a novel would "mould them into something they clearly were not." This is evidence that story can dictate form in the intuitively creative process of writing.

In the first story, Bitri is a teacher at a small college in an unnamed remote location. Late one night he is walking on the campus when he is drawn toward voices in which he hears tones that are "furtive and conniving."

Bitri sees a group of students surrounding a man "on his knees . . . stripped to the waist . . . his arms tied behind his back." He recognizes the ringleader and the victim, a fellow teacher named Miller.

Much of Bitri’s character and morality is revealed in this story, all of which must be discovered by reading the story not a review. What can be revealed is that the ambiguity of setting, the acuteness (if not accuracy) of Bitri as witness, and the subtly and technical virtuosity of Colford as a writer are all common elements through the stories.

The reader’s experience of discovery about the character Bitri mirrors that of the author’s own understanding of his creation.

"I learned about Kostandin as I wrote. He revealed himself slowly. It was very much a process of him emerging from the shadows. Sometimes I was horrified by what I learned. But I’d already decided I wasn’t going to back away from the dark side of his nature. I wanted a flawed and complex character because that’s what I would want as a reader. . . . I didn’t need to like him. But I needed to find his story interesting enough to want to unravel it. Again, this is probably why the revelations about his background came gradually. I was figuring him out as I went, and I imagined what kind of life experience would produce this sort of person."

What kind of life Bitri had is a question that compels the reader through the stories searching for clues as to his background, his family, even simply his country of origin. Contradictory information must be sifted and weighed, and finally, accepted or not.

Bitri is a waiter, a teacher, an archivist, a hotel employee, a research assistant; all manner of employment in whatever circumstances he finds himself. The stories unfold with the specifics of politics and history left subtly vague yet pertinent.

"I was conscious of the politics that gave rise to Kostandin’s situation. But I didn’t want to burden the story with politics," Colford says.

Bitri crosses paths with many other similarly wandering characters in the stories and his complex reactions to the situations in which he finds himself and in relation to other people, are mined by Colford for all the intensity and moral conflict possible.

Mary Jo Anderson is a freelance writer who lives in Banff.