LITERATURE: The Culture Section’s pick of great books from Wales!!

A Toy Epic (1958) - by Emyr Humphries

First published in 1958 and winner of the Hawthornden prize. A Toy Epic is the story of three boys moving into the threshold of adultlife in the thirties. Each of the characters has the opportunity to take up the story, creating their own particular world and through this they begin to compose a picture of ‘one of the four corners of Wales.’ It is widely regarded as a classic amongst writing from Wales.

The Great God Pan(1894) - by Arthur Machen

Acclaimed by everyone from Oscar Wilde to Stephen King to Jorge Louis Borges. This late nineteenth century novella tells the story of an experiment on the brain of a young woman which has gone horribly wrong. As a result she has seen the Great God Pan and will die giving birth. Skip forward twenty years and we learn the story of Helen Vaughan, a beauty whom men become infatuated with. A masterpiece from a figure who seemed to struggle with his Welsh identity in an English world.

Sheepshagger(2001) - by Niall Griffiths

Follows the story of Ianto, he is a feral, inarticulate, inbred haunter of mountains and killer of innocents; a Welsh Redneck. In contrast he is also a seer and visionary who comprehends nature with Blakean intensity. Robbed of his ancestral home, Ianto swears revenge not just on the English Yuppies who have taken his home, but on all who have violated him and the land that is his.

Black Parade (1935) - by Jack Jones

Saran, one of many of Merthyr’s Brickyard girls, watches the world parade past her doorstep on the banks of Morlais Brook; a stinking, rat infested area. The highlight of Saran’s life is a trip to the town’s wooden theatre, something which she never misses despite her life being ruled by the 5a.m hooter, pit strikes, politics, and the First World War. The town continually changes, but Saran is always there, she has to be as her family needs her.Raymond Williams describes this work as ‘strong because… it includes.. the inherence and contradictions, which the more available stereotypes of history exclude.’

New Stories From The Mabinogion (2009 onwards)

This fantastic series has so far contained versatile and critically acclaimed authors such as Owen Sheers and Niall Griffiths. Each book in the tale aims to retell and reinvent one branch of the Mabinogion and each is brilliant and original in its own right. The first four books of this tremendous series are White Ravens by Owen Sheers, The Ninth Wave by Russel Celyn Jones, The Dreams of Max and Ronnie by Niall Griffiths and The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis. This is not a series to be missed.