Search results for ""Parthian""

"The Book of Katerina is a gleefully sardonic novel about illness and family, and how we can never quite cure ourselves of either." - GLEN JAMES BROWN Award-winning and prolific author of novels, plays, novellas, short story collections and translations. A popular stage adaptation of the novel, directed by Yorgos Nanouris, won critical acclaim and was presented to UK audiences in 2016. 'My name is Katerina, and I died by a route dark and lonely, for there was too much in me I could bear no longer.' In this acclaimed Greek novel, Auguste Corteau imagines his own mother's inner life, observing with wit and earthy humour the saga of her extended family's ups and downs in the city of Thessaloniki over three generations. From the poverty of the early years through to affluence and aspirations of grandeur, Katerina drags her husband and son into the chaos of her life: sicknesses are hidden, siblings fight for love and attention while feckless husbands and unwanted children are riven through the family story.

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The seventh-most spoken language in the world, Bengali is home to some of the most distinctive poetry ever written anywhere. Starting with the later poems of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, there has been a long and continuous line of modern poetry in the language, its span ranging from lyrical love poems to passionate political verse, from expressions of existential anguish to psychological explorations. This volume celebrates over one hundred years of this poetry from the two Bengals—the eastern Indian state and the country of Bangladesh— represented by over fifty different poets and a multitude of forms and styles.

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Jess has lived peaceably in Shrewsbury with her husband Jacob for many years. He is solid, dependable, beautiful to her. She is contented to be his wife, to look after his elderly mother, aunt and cousin, to be a pillar of their family and community. Then, suddenly, everything changes. Now Jess must question the entire basis on which she has lived so many years of her life. Must discover whether the identity she has created has really been so valuable to herself and to those around her, and whether there is a different – angry, passionate, fulfillable – Jess waiting to get out.

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From the very beginnings of Wales, its people have defined themselves against their large neighbour. Wales: England's Colony? shows, that relationship has not only defined what it has meant to be Welsh, it has also been central to making and defining Wales as a nation.

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Debut novel from Rachel Trezise, winner of the Orange Futures Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. The story of a brutal childhood in the Welsh Valleys. Rebecca is trying to grow up fast but the whole world’s against her. She falls in love, gets drunk and takes drugs. There are things she needs to forget. But when writing and books take hold of her life she starts to come up from the bottom.

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“There is no short-story writer who has quite the same gift of infectious vitality, whose scenes and characters seem to come so spontaneously alive” Times Literary SupplementRhys Davies achieved an international reputation as a writer of skill and originality. He wrote for the best magazines of 1930s through to the New Yorker in the 1950s, maintaining a prolific output of both stories and novels.In this Library of Wales edition, with a foreword by Tomos Owen, the essence of his work is revealed with a new selection of dark, witty and finely crafted stories.

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Winner of the Writers' Trust of Canada Journey Prize Longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, Burrard Inlet is the body of water that divides Vancouver's North Shore from the rest of the Lower Mainland. In this collection of award-winning stories, Tyler Keevil uses that rugged landscape as a backdrop for characters who are struggling against the elements, each other, and themselves.A search-and-rescue volunteer looks for a missing snowboarder on Christmas Eve; two brothers retreat to the woods to shoot a film in memory of their dead friend; a reclusive forestry worker picks up a hitcher on his way down Mount Seymour; a young man finds a temporary haven on the ice barge where he works. Written in a lean, muscular style, these are stories awash in blood and brine, and steeped in images of freedom and confinement. Within that narrative framework, Burrard Inlet becomes more than a geographical location: it is a liminal space, a boundary and a barrier, a threshold to be crossed.

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At the age of fifty, towards the end of the First World War, W. H. Davies decided that he must marry. Spurning London society and the literary circles where he had been lionised since the publication of his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, he set about looking for the right partner on the streets of London. Young Emma is a moving and revealing memoir told with disarming honesty and humour. Davies records his life with three women: from his affair with Bella, the wife of a Sergeant Major, to his year-long liaison with the gentle Louise, to the turbulent brushes with a society woman who fears for her own life at his hands. He finally meets Emma, then pregnant, at a bus-stop on the Edgware Road. This is the story of their love affair.

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This rich biography tells the remarkable tale of Margaret Haig Thomas who became the Second Viscountess Rhondda. She was a Welsh suffragette, held important posts during the First World War and survived the sinking of the Lusitania. A leading British industrialist, she was also instrumental in securing a seat for women in the House of Lords. Closely associated with figures such as Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain and George Bernard Shaw, she founded and edited the weekly paper Time and Tide, which dazzled British society with its cutting-edge perspectives. It championed progressive views on women's rights in the 1920s, became a leading literary space for women and men from the thirties onwards and a respected political commentator on national and international affairs. Drawing upon a rich array of sources, many previously unused, Angela V. John explores both the public achievements and the fascinating private world of one of the movers and shakers of British society in the first half of the twentieth century.

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Up ahead, Helen saw the police line harden into a barricade of bodies and shields. Resin batons thudded on Perspex shields; slow, thuggish, brutal. Goosebumps studded her arms and legs. Her pace slowed to the truncheons' beat. Mary halted a yard from the riot shields, raised her megaphone. 'We are women from Ystrad an' from all over Wales,' she said. 'We are here to make peaceful protest. Here in solidarity with the men.' The drumming quickened. Trouble is brewing in Ystrad. It is time to defend jobs, the pits and a way of life that has formed both the life of valley and the nation. The union is squaring up to the Coal Board, the government, the country. Gwyn Pritchard, overman at Blackthorn colliery, believes that the way to save his pit is to keep the mine open and production high. His men disagree and when an old collier dies on Gwyn's shift, the men's simmering resentment spills over into open defiance. But Gwyn faces a challenge at home too. His daughter Helen is in love with a fiery young collier, Scrapper Jones. In March 1984, when miners across the country begin the long strike, Scrapper throws himself into the struggle and Helen joins the women, preparing food for the soup kitchen and standing with the men on the picket line. Helen and Gwyn must decide which side they are on as the year-long dispute drives the Pritchard family apart and the Jones family to ruin. What matters most: to be right, to be loved or to belong?

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The Library of Wales' Story anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social and economic turbulence of twentieth century Wales. More than eighty outstanding works from the classics of Dylan Thomas, Rhys Davies, Arthur Machen and Gwyn Thomas to the almost forgotten brilliance of Margiad Evans and Dilys Rowe and then forward to the prize-winning work of Emyr Humphreys, Rachel Trezise and Leonora Brito, colouring and engaging in the life of a changed country. Story II depicts a Wales facing-up to a dramatically changed culture and society in a world where the old certainties of class and money, love and war, of living and surviving do not hold. The writers explore the spirit of a country while the ground keeps shifting beneath them. In this selection Dai Smith has crafted an anthology that gives a unique insight into the life of a country: identity; language; class; sex are all are explored intensely in this kaleidoscope of the best of the last fifty years of Welsh short fiction.

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Snowdonia, 1880, and Jane Gruffydd is a newcomer to the district, dressed to the nines and almost fainting in the heat of the interminable prayer meeting out on the mountainside...In the pages of this classic 1936 novel, we see the passionate and headstrong Jane grow up and grow old, struggling to bring up a family of six children on the pittance earned by her slate-quarrying husband, Ifan. Spanning the next forty years, the novel traces the contours not only of one vividly evoked Welsh family but of a nation coming to self-consciousness; it begins in the heyday of Methodist fervour and ends in the carnage and disillusionment of the First World War. Through it all, Jane survives, the centre of her world and the inspiration for her children who will grow up determined to change the conditions of these poor people's lives, to release them forever from their chains.

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In the first and, arguably, the finest of Hilda Vaughan's ten novels the dawn of the twentieth century brings a new generation that clashes with the conservative traditionalism of an old Welsh way of life. Rhys Lloyd and his engagement with the ideas of Social Darwinism and the League of Nations make him a dangerous figure in the village. The son of a Welsh-speaking Nonconformist, his love for the church-going Esther reflects tensions that have long and bitterly divided the community. Most striking, however, is the stoic and determined Esther who calmly suffers the casual brutality of her agricultural upbringing, drawing on an inner strength and organic spirituality that would provide an archetype for Vaughan's later heroines. Despite a loving and sensitive depiction of her native Radnorshire landscape, Vaughan offers no rural idyll. "The Battle to the Weak" is a vividly drawn, socially engaged portrait of a small rural Welsh community with an awareness of its context within the wider world.

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The most legendary names in poetry from Wales - David Jones, Idris Davies, Vernon Watkins, RS Thomas, Dylan Thomas and Alun Lewis - are featured here alongside many living greats such as Dannie Abse, Tony Conran, Gillian Carke, Tony Curtis, Robert Minhinnick and Gwyneth Lewis. Every decade of the century is featured, as is almost every part of Wales - urban, industrial and rural - and many of the poems reflect our history from Edwardian times to the post-industrial present. Biographical notes are provided for all the poets. A few lesser names have been selected to suggest continuity and the changing literary scene over the century. Wales now has a rich, vibrant and varied literature in English and this anthology reflects it comprehensive, authoritative and lively way.

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My great grandfather and grandfather sailed the Horn, in steam and diesel, out of Liverpool. I was the first generation not to sail the Horn or fight a war. Instead, I would go to the end of the world, beyond Patagonia, to Tierra del Fuego. I would do more, I would see the Horn and find lost tribes. The child in me could go even further and sail the waters of Coleridge's albatross and enter the watercolours' blue horizons of my first novel, and sit on Robinson Crusoe's imaginary shore. I had imagined these places; they must exist. All I had to do was look for them.

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New Baltic Poetry is a collection celebrating the diversity of writing from the three Baltic countries; Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Six of the most talented poets from each country are translated and published in English, in many cases for the first time, providing a taste of the fresh, dynamic literary scene in the contemporary Baltic states.This collection includes poetry by Benediktas Janusevicius, Antanas A. Jonynas, Giedre Kazlauskaite, Indrek Hirv, Helena Laks, Mats Traat, Kai Aareleid, and others. It was launched at the Parthian poetry festival at the Wheatsheaf and the London Book Fair 2018 (focus region: Baltics).

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EDITED BY ELAINE CANNING INTRODUCED BY JULIA BELL A collection of new contemporary short stories by Welsh writers, comprising twelve diverse stories about human relationships between people and places, representing the winners of the 2021 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. Including short biographical notes on the authors and an introduction by Guest Judge Julia Bell, a writer and Course Director of the MA Creative Writing at Birbeck, University of London The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is a distinguished national writing competition for writers born or living in Wales. Originally established in 1991, Parthian is delighted to publish the 2021 winning stories on behalf of the Rhys Davies Trust and in association with Swansea University's Cultural Institute. Previous winners of the prize have included Leonora Brito, Tristan Hughes and Kate Hamer.

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Family connections, unconventional friendships, love and loss: the twelve stories in this collection of new contemporary fiction by the winners of the 2022 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition present characters seeking solace, self-discovery and self-fulfilment as they navigate familiar and unfamiliar territory. Two sisters search for the last available Christmas tree while coming to terms with their mother's death; a stammering teen hitches a lift with a Welsh Elvis; a man participates in his 'endgame'; and a teacher and pupil create their very own time machine. From hillside encounters to conversations in homes, shops and on the street, these are stories about people and place, about relationships and revelations, peppered with memories and re- imaginings. These are stories where some voices are silenced and others get to sing. The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition recognises the very best unpublished short stories in English in any style by writers aged 18 or over who were born in Wales, have lived in Wales for two years or more, or are currently living in Wales. Originally established in 1991, Parthian is delighted to publish the 2022 winning stories on behalf of the Rhys Davies Trust and in association with Swansea University's Cultural Institute.

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From Rhondda heroes chasing the American dream to rioters staking a claim in their society In the Frame is a powerful alternative history of twentieth-century South Wales, offered from the personal viewpoint of cultural historian Dai Smith.

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A collection of poetry from Norman Schwenk.

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Peter Lord surveys the evolution of the visual culture of Wales from the Renaissance to the end of the twentieth century in this new, single-volume history.

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In Ponty is it? Daryl Leeworthy journeys from the isolation of Llanwonno to the unmarked border between the true metropolis of Wales and that southern pretender, Cardiff, and on the way learns what brings him back to his hometown every time he tries to leave and what now really keeps him there.

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Landeg White's Living in the Delta adds new poems to a selection from his nine previous collections published over a period of forty years. Ranging from the West Indies, Southern and West Africa, to Britain, Portugal and latterly the UAE, they are characterised by abundance, lucidity, variety, and mastery of form.

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The Undressed is a poetry collection inspired by a cache of antique nude photographs of women. King studied the photographs ranging from the 1840s to the 1930s and attempted to return voices to these mostly anonymous women lost to history.

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Noah, a debt collector and investigator in his late twenties, is slowly putting away enough money to get out of the murky world of solicitors, bankers, bent coppers and cheating wives for good. [...] but then comes the job that changes everything.

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The Scrapbook is a novel about memory, and the unreliability of memory. It's about the tangled, often dysfunctional, bonds of family. And it's about absence and the power that a void can exert over a person's life.

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Landscape and nature take centre stage in this practised collection. Here we have a bird's - or perhaps moth's - eye view of the natural world and the ways in which we interact (and often fail to interact) with it.

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A vision of contemporary Dubai from the perspective of a variety of expats from different parts of the world, telling tales of hardship and the high-life, paranoia and alienation, cruelty and love.

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A collection of poetry as you have never seen it before, these short, experimental works blur the boundary between prose and poetry.

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Whether you're a lifelong "Jack" or a recent convert to the "beautiful game", this collection of essays is an introduction to the fascinating history of Welsh Football.

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Cadillac Temple is Norman Schwnk's first collection since The More Deceived: poems about love and lovers (2005). Born and educated in the USA, he came to Wales from Sweden in the 1960's.

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Featuring research by some of established critics in the field of Welsh writing in English, this title aims to engage in an informed way both with the Welsh literary past and with contemporary writing, looking towards the future and outwards towards the rest of the world.

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Tells the stories of twelve disabled women, ten from Wales and two from the West of England.

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A work by the author of "White Star" and "From Empty Harbour to White Ocean".

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Presents sixteen stories of rural Midwest America: smalltown secrets, the powerful silences that bind families, and seven shades of female friendship.

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An English translation from an acclaimed Welsh writer, this romantic fantasy novel won the 1992 Welsh National Eisteddfod Prose Medal.

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Creating a stirring collection, these poems capture the strength and fragility of the moments of lovethose instances of decision, reflection, loss, and longing."

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A compelling thriller, The Volunteers is also an engrossing reminder of the conflict between moral choice and political loyalty, for through his obsessive pursuit of justice Redfern finally encounters the truth about himself.

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The works of poetry, prose and essays offer a snapshot of the concerns and preoccupations shared by young writers from a region with a rich literature that rarely reaches English-language readers and at the same time confirms the vitality of the bilingual Welsh literary scene.

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A reliable and clean source of water is essential for any community, so it is easy to understand how important wells were for pre-modern peoples. More complex is the mystical relationship humans have developed with these sites, which are imbued with a sacredness that predates Christianity. Holy Wells of Wexford and Pembrokeshire is a series of five chapbooks celebrating holy wells in two regions with common ancestry and history. Since at least the Bronze Age, sea travel between these two lands has meant cross-fertilisation of traditions and common names associated with wells of both regions. Of significance is the long-standing friendship between two early Christian saints: David, who became the first Bishop of St Davids; and Aidan, born in Ireland, who spent time in Wales and then founded monasteries in Ireland, including at Ferns. In Oilgate, Wexford, there is a well dedicated to David and, at Whitesands near St Davids in Pembrokeshire, there is one named after Aidan. Each of the five books approaches the subject from different perspectives and mediums, including fiction, poetry and essays as well as photographs and prints.

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From a humble background in Barry, where his father was a butcher and local politician in the formative years of the new town, Cyril Lakin studied at Oxford, survived the First World War, and went on to become a Fleet Street editor, radio presenter and war-time member of parliament. As literary editor of both the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times, Lakin was at the centre of a vibrant and radical generation of writers, poets and critics, many of whom he recruited as reviewers. He gained a parliamentary seat and served in the National Government during World War II. The different worlds he inhabited, from Wales to Westminster, and across class, profession and party, were facilitated by his relaxed disposition, convivial company, and ability to cultivate influential contacts. An effective talent-spotter and catalyst for new projects, he preferred pragmatism over ideology and non-partisanship in politics: a moderate Conservative for modern times.

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Widely acclaimed for its warm humour, lyricism and honesty, as well as its accurate evocation of the 30s, this has become a classic. In this autobiographical novel, Abse interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backcloth of the times.

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Alys Morgan was admitted to hospital on the 19th of April, with an unexplained sickness which had rendered her too weak to move. The next day she was diagnosed with Covid-19 - though staff understood her symptoms as little as the virus itself. This is one woman's account of a pandemic no-one seemed prepared for - from the bed of a north-Wales hospital struggling to care for its multiplying patients. It's a story of mothers and daughters, isolation and survival, love and loss. But most of all, it's a testament to everything we owe those providing care - and comfort - on the new front line.

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A 20th anniversary edition with a foreword by peter finch cardiff cut is witty, obscene, defiant; an anarchic joycean monologue steeped in the city of cardiff. neither truth nor fiction taken from real life or what seemed for an instant

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Hymns Ancient & Modern, New & Selected Poems, brings together the best of Brookes from four books and booklets, published from the early 90s: 43 Poems, The Dresden Cantata, Book, and More Last Poems and some new editions. Brookes handles with confidence and purpose poems both as neat and revealing as a mathematical equation, and poems that trip down the page on their rhymes. His subjects are as various as the world, often funny, in all the senses of the word, always unsentimental, each carefully observed and valued, whether a noisy cafe, model boats on a lake, or a neighbour dying in a hospital bed.

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Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks explores fractured connections of self, family and home, laying bare the devastating impact of traumatisation against language and identity in its unflinching quest to communicate the brittle reality of everyday life at the edge. The destructive forces of suicide, insomnia, self-harm and abuse are given order through the creative drive of poetic forms. At the heart of this collection are a daughter's fraught relationships with her half Japanese father, who survived three years as a POW in Czechoslovakia, and a mother who grew up in National Socialist Germany, and whose unspoken traumas haunted the fabric of family life.

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Edward Thomas and Wales offers a fascinating re-evaluation of Thomas's writing. Bringing together for the first time the prose and poetry centred in Thomas's ancestral land of Wales, it explores the `Welshness' of Thomas's work and of Thomas himself.

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