Search results for ""Parthian Books""

Since 1996, Sam Adams's Letter from Wales' column has been appearing in PN Review, one of the most highly-regarded UK poetry magazines, offering insight and appreciation of Welsh writing, culture and history. This landmark volume collects these letters a quarter century of work.

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Minnie Pallister's life was so fantastic that not even a thriller writer could imagine it. A feminist, pacifist and socialist, she was twice accused of sedition in the First World War before travelling to Nazi Germany in late 1938 and 1939 to rescue Jews, helping bring them to Britain at the outbreak of the Second World War.

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It is 1984 and a small town somewhere in the east of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is in the firm grip of totalitarianism. Unruly and sickly Karolína is growing up in an all-female household including her hot-blooded, knife-wielding grandmother. Repelled by her mum’s serial love affairs Karolína runs away and stumbles upon a riding school on the edge of town. There, she befriends Romana, a girl with one leg shorter than the other and Matilda, a rider and trainer who helps the two girls overcome their physical limitations. Together they found a successful trick-riding team and soon it seems that half flags, mills and scales are not the only tricks flashing like blades up her sequinned sleeve as Karolína explores Pink Floyd and smoking, and discovers her knack for seeing deep into others’ souls. The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the subsequent arrival of capitalism threatens to destroy the riding school. The team has to turn professional. But in a sport of perfect scores is there still room for Romana and Karolína...? The Equestrienne is a poetic, caustic coming-of-age novel about the desire of one young girl to realise her dreams before and after Velvet Revolution; it is a celebration of friendship between women and also a bitter acknowledgement that greed and the desire for power can destroy any relationship.

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Washing my Hair with Nettles describes a natural world that lives as profoundly and passionately as the people who inhabit it. The landscape of her poetry resonates with soul and animism: mountains dream of music, wild creatures heal wounds, and women tread the thin line between modern day reality and traditional myth with delicate respect.

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Fall into the dreamlike realities of absinthe and madness. Here, buildings pursue their own malevolent intents; a grieving father and daughter receive a grisly visitor; a man is unravelled by strange symbolism in a twilit park; and a botanist will stop at nothing to safeguard her borders.

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When Maisie Shergold, art historian, meets Michael Curran, folk musician, on the platform of Paddington Station she falls in love with him instantly. Ignoring the differences in their backgrounds, ages, and personal outlook, she pursues the affair with a single-minded intensity that borders on obsession.

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Little Man examines what it means to be alive. Never boastful of its wares, it is a collection that shows Richard James Jones isn't afraid to get its hands dirty - exploring the frustrations of his craft, strange graffiti on an old shed, or even casting a keen eye to the detritus that washes up on the beach.

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Rhys Davies (1901-78) was among the most dedicated, prolific and accomplished of Welsh prose writers.

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Coming back home from the Far East after years serving in Burma, George returns to South Wales to deal with ferociously Communist self-appointed commissars of the local colliery, and getting enough black market coupons off Jack Bach the butcher's wife to buy a suit and marry beautiful, dark-haired Peggy the Papers.

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Love, lust, loss, art and myth - all find their way into Alan Kellermann's stylish debut collection.

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Focuses on an image from Homer: the great shield which Hephaestus forged for the warrior, Achilles. This work attempts to imagine a shield for the complexities of the current era.

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A novel about growing up in a world unhinged by war; about longing, loss, and the search for home. It is suitable for those with an interest in twentieth century history who would like to find out what it might have been like to be on the other side during one of its major conflicts.

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In 2006 Director Andre Stitt formed a collective of Wales based artists at Trace Install-Action Artspace in Cardiff. Trace Collective have since embarked on a series of projects, resulting in performance work as archives, incorporating experiences of displacement, memory and recalled and reconstituted materials to form a collective performance.

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A collision between the personal and the political; a past affair that might just rekindle and present corruption in 'the party'. Can he persuade her not to cause trouble for the party leadership or will she ignore the feelings she still has for him to bring the leadership down?

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Holy Hiatus sought to examine the ways that artists can draw audiences into different, often unexpected experiences of place through ritual. The temporary, mobile and in some cases, understated nature of the works meant that the impact was often subtle, but the artworks nonetheless created a ripple of effect for audiences.

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A Welsh muscle-boy discovers his ability to escape the past is not as developed as his physique. A murder charge liberates a doctor's wife. An indifferent carer and a dyoing hotelier share a night. A sado-masochistic poet realises the only tortures left are images from his own life.

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These stories, poems, plays, and film scripts from some of Wales' up-and-coming writers feature words of protest and joy, anger and release--all infused with an energy and compassion that offers hope.

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While in Barcelona translating a best-selling Italian book, Blanca identifies so much with the main character - a woman whose husband is unfaithful - that she begins to doubt her own husband. She is compelled to travel to Sicily to meet the book's author and discover where his story came from. But once in Sicily, can she remain faithful herself?

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Fourteen year-old Pierre's mother is dead, and he came a long way to his present life in Camden with his white dad Stevo; from Brussels, via numerous failing and rejecting schools. Ashley Cochrane taught Pierre English, and he thought the boy harmless enough when term started. Ashley's ties with Pierre's family go back a way, and they are bloody.

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A collection of international poetry, which has been chosen by national leaders, prime-ministers and presidents, including Tony Blair, Ariel Sharon and Gerhard Schroder.

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A collection of dramas by contemporary dramatists.

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Vickery is obsessed with the taboos' within society. These plays reflects his obsession and demonstrates how he transposes ordinary people's lives to the stage with relevance.

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Containing selections from the poet's previous five publications, as well as new poetry, this volume is a comprehensive introduction to a poet who writes with humor, pathos, and a gift for observation.

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Claire is a young geologist working in Tunisia. Her partner sends her postcards from a cold flat in London. John is Irish and the wrong religion. She writes back - Tunisia is warm, full of the bright colours of the desert. Claire doesn't mention Ali - she doesn't think John would understand.

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With science fiction tropes recalling Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut and Olga Ravn, The Last Day is a testament to the depth and creativity of Welsh literature. Its translation into English is long overdue.

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This beautiful, poetic debut novel warn of the dangers of being a quiet person in a loud world and letting magnetic strangers pull your strings. Set on the Welsh coast, Unspeakable Beauty is an unsettling coming-of-age tale.

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Sex, murder, and a devastating, humour mark these three novellas that Gwyn Thomas wrote in 1946. In Oscar, the narrator of death and exploitation fails to fend off the evil that envelops him. InSimeon, the abuse of sexual and family power ends with violent death, and in The Dark Philosophers itself, the grimly humorous philosophers gather in an Italian café to tell the tragic tale of revenge and manslaughter that they engineer.

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This much overdue and generously illustrated monograph traces Isabel Alexander's life, influences and work over her sixty-year career.

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In this clear and absorbing memoir John Sam Jones writes of a life lived on the edge. It's a story of journeys and realisation, of acceptance and joy. From a boyhood on the coast of Wales to a traumatic period as an undergraduate in Aberystwyth, and on to a scholarship at Berkley on the San Francisco Bay as the AIDS epidemic began to take hold before returning to Liverpool and north Wales to work in chaplaincy, education and sexual health. A journey of becoming a writer and chronicler of his experiences with award-winning books and the somewhat reluctant compulsion to become a campaigner for LGBT rights in Wales. The adventure of running a guest house in Barmouth where he eventually became Mayor with his husband, a German academic, whom he had married after a long partnership. Just days after European Referendum they put the business on the market... and then moved to Germany. John is still on that journey.

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A Dirty Broth Early Twentieth-Century Welsh Plays in English Edited by David Cottis With an introduction by David Cottis and Alyce von Rothkirch When Caradoc Evans’ play Taffy was first performed in London, the Western Mail reviewer described it as ‘like a dirty broth which, dished out to the English people, is swallowed with avidity.’ In so doing, it summed up the treatment often given to the tradition of English-language playwriting in Wales – sometimes ignored, sometimes disapproved of, rarely celebrated. This Anthology, the first in a series of three, brings together three plays from the beginnings of Welsh playwriting in English; Change by J. O. Francis (1913), a family drama of the upheavals at the start of the twentieth century, Taffy (1923), a fierce satire on the Welsh social and religious establishment, and A Comedy of Good and Evil (1924) by Richard Hughes, a magical realist fantasy of the dilemmas faced by a country cleric and his wife when they are faced with a literal demon-child. Edited by David Cottis, who also co-wrote the Introduction with Alyce von Rothkirch, this volume shows the earliest stirrings of the English-language theatre in Wales, and the first of many attempts to set up a Welsh National Theatre. It sees the beginnings of the preoccupations and subject matter that were to characterise Welsh playwriting throughout the twentieth century, and to influence later writers such as Emlyn Williams, Dylan Thomas, Diana Morgan, and Jack Jones.

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Cassandra Fish believes she is out of this world, wearing her orange film-set spacesuit daily in the hope that her absent parents will return and take her back to her real planet. While she waits she accompanies her friends on one last great night out to drink, dance, take bad chemicals, have bad trips, have bad ideas, and do unthinkable thing

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"A fitting tribute to the memory of radical Welsh poet Terry Hetherington ... Gives young writers in Wales a wonderful opportunity for recognition" Mike Jenkins Angels in demons slink into sleepy Welsh villages. Whispers of a witch in Cwmgrach. A startling set of wings push through a young girl's shoulderblades. An ancient secret breathes in an Irish heirloom. For twelve years the Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award has provided a platform for emerging young writers from and living in Wales. This year Cheval 13 brings together a variety of the best short stories and poetry from young Welsh writers for the 2020 Terry Hetherington Award, showcasing a startling array of promising new voices in literature.

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How to Carry Fire was born from the ashes of family addiction. Beginning with the burning down of her childhood home, Thatcher explores how fire can both destroy and cleanse. Her work recognises embers everywhere: in farmhouses, heroin needles, poisonous salamanders. Thatcher reveals how fire is internalised and disclosed through anxiety, addiction, passion and love. Underneath and among the flames runs the American and Welsh landscapes - locations which, like fire itself, offer up experiences which mesmerise, burn and purify. This poignant second collection reminds us of how the most dangerous and volatile fires can forge us - even long after the flames have died down.

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Humorous, serious and sometimes outrageous, Topher Mills' poetry covers swimming, love, work, dialects, sex, politics, death and everything inbetween. From the incidental ordinary to the waywardly imaginative Sex on Toast gathers Mills' best-known work together with a host of new and uncollected material. From the earliest poems here, written in his teens, to those written in sardonic middle-age, he sings of his life and times as the essential Cardiff bard.

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For many in Britain the issue of the country's membership of the European Union is the biggest political decision of their lifetime. It affects their livelihoods, their communities, the life chances of their children and their grandchildren and, above all, their sense of themselves. The existential nature of what is at stake is, perhaps, the reason the rift in British society is so deep. Geraint Talfan Davies, writes as a committed European, but also from the perspective of Wales - of the UK's nations, the one that he argues has most to lose from Brexit. His diary takes us through Auschwitz, a German car factory, and a European Cup Final. He explores the potential impact of Brexit on our universities and our cultural life. He also takes us through a clutch of referendums - on devolution in Wales and on independence in Scotland - charting the interplay of devolution and the European issue. Closely involved in the Europe referendum, he is critical of the campaign for not expressing a sense of idealism, and, writing just as the Parliamentary debate approaches its climax, he makes the case that the Labour Party must steel itself to stop Brexit.

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Since the end of WWI, one party has held the momentum of political and social change in South Wales: the Labour Party. Its triumph was never fully guaranteed. It came quickly amidst a torrent of ideas, actions, and war. But the result was a vibrant, effective and long-lasting democracy. The result was Labour Country. In this bold, controversial book, Daryl Leeworthy takes a fresh and provocative look at the struggle through radical political action for social democracy in Wales. The reasons for Labour’s triumph, he argues, lay in radical pragmatism and an ability to harness lofty ideals with meaningful practicality. This was a place of dreamers as well as doers. The world of Arthur Horner and Aneurin Bevan. And yet, as the author shows, this history is now over. Although a trajectory leads from the end of the Miners’ Strike both to the advent of devolution and the circumstances that led to the Brexit vote in 2016, these are exits from Labour Country, not a continuation. Sustained by a powerful synthesis of scholarship and original research, passionate and committed, this book brings the cubist epic of South Wales and its politics to life.

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Head in the Clouds: Memories and Reflections is the long-awaited sequel to Boyd Clack's acclaimed first memoir Kisses Sweeter Than Wine. Made up of 100 Facebook posts, the book blends prose with selected poems to share tales from the stage, from the Welsh valleys and from the founder of The League of Middle Aged Destroyed Men. Boyd examines the merits of snail racing, suggests what to say when meeting an ugly baby, and explores ageing, love, and death. His reflections are based on years of observing the common beauty found in people, animals, and trees all of which form what he calls 'The River of Souls'.

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Over more than a decade, Dylan Moore has written with verve, insight and warm humour about places. Life’s journey takes the author from winding roads in rural Wales via bull runs in the Basque Country to the mangrove swamps of the Gulf of Guinea; from smalltown stations in Slovenia to the gates of Auschwitz; from bookshops in Venice and San Francisco to literary festivals on the Keralan coast; from football terraces in Cardiff to street protests in Mexico City. Along the way we meet refugees from Kurdistan and Venezuela, recovering addicts from Bosnia, writers, artists, flamenco dancers, activists, and desert tribesmen singing the songs of Manu Chao. Driving Home Both Ways is part essay collection, part travelogue through life – it offers fresh reflections on the changing nature of the local and the global, epiphanies of tribe and faith, and is underscored always by the enduring allure of elsewhere and the constant pull of home.

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Kelinu waits for a birthday card from the Queen of England. He has a few years to go but he'll wait. His niece thinks he's a fool. He was in the service of the Queen only a year, all those years ago. Times have changed. In these stories people strive to make a place, a living, a life with meaning in a new country or sense in an old one: from zero hour contracts in Bridgend and Munich to scraping a living as a mermaid on the streets of Barcelona. A woman tends a beautiful garden she knows will be taken away from her while another sends her child to a school concert dressed as a dinosaur. A man attends yet one more demonstration while another explains to his daughter where he is really from. In this diverse and fascinating anthology, writers from across Europe embark on a journey of independence and belonging.

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Translated by Jayde WillEeva Park began as the author of mood poems depicting nature, and has said that she mixed feeling and thought in her poetry, while her prose is a mixture of understanding and memory. This original collection, translated by Jayde Will is an exploration of values, real and imagined incorporating the best of Park's work from the last three decades. Freefall is part of the 'Parthian Baltic' project. The project was launched at the Parthian poetry festival at the Wheatsheaf and the London Book Fair 2018 (focus region: Baltics).

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Ethel Ross, the sister in law of Alfred Janes, was the guardian of Dylan Thomas' legacy for decades. Shortly after his death in 1953, She compiled a photo memoir of his haunts in and around Swansea. Ugly, Lovely: Dylan's Swansea and Carmarthenshire of the 1950s in Pictures is a touching collection of Ethel's photos accompanied by quotes from Dylan Thomas' poetry and her own comments. Together they provide an unprecendented portrait of Swansea, Laugharne and Llansteffan in the 1950s, letting the reader see the Carmarthenshire landscape for the first time through the eyes of Wales' most celebrated poet. Ugly, Lovely also contains a rarely seen satirical sketch, 'Lunch at Mussolini's', written by Thomas as a schoolboy. 'This particular sketch he gave to me to put on at the Swansea Little Theatre. In those days I used to write comic sketches for the party held after each show; but it was never produced, probably because I managed in the end to put together something more topical for the society. I still have the script, however.'- Ethel Ross Lunch at Mussolini's offers a vivid and whimsical insight into the early workings of Dylan's mind and a caustic satire of the dictator's life. Patiently preserved by Ethel, the sketch will be published for the first time alongside her photo memoir.

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Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Award, the Roland Mathias Award and the Welsh Book of the Year Award, The Shape of a Forest is a powerful survey of life and of human experience that spans centuries and the continents.

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In these slippery stories the truth and the possible weave as unexpected lives, complicated minds and exotic spaces are sketched in with nimble words and quick wit. Ghosts torment from the past; future selves write back; the lost look about, find themselves watched, and are led astray.

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