What makes a great Welsh novel? Honest storytelling that lets us feel the troubling times. Elegant language that paints evocative imagery of the land and people of Wales. Rare literary talent that has us laughing one minute and crying the next. Above all, a book that leaves us looking at the world differently.
Perhaps one of the most notable things about a great Welsh novel is that there are modern Welsh authors writing classics just as incredible as the writers who came before them. There’s a lot that can be said of this and what it means. It’s all too easy to think of “the greats” as belonging to the past, as something given by those in earlier times, the likes of which we will never see again. But the classic Welsh novel is alive and well. We can be grateful that it’s not bound to a specific period or tied to a typewriter.
The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price is a shining example of a classic novel written in the modern era. The author originally wrote the book in Welsh in 2002, titled O! Tyn Y Gorchudd (“O! Pull Aside the Veil!”). It won many awards and was translated into English by Lloyd Jones. Many readers have commented that despite the change of language, it’s so masterfully written that its emotions and messages translate very well. The story beautifully conveys early twentieth-century life in Cwm Maesglasau (Maesglasau Valley) and the struggles and joys of its inhabitants.
This post recommends books for those looking for a Welsh novel.
The Welsh Novel
Other incredible Welsh novels on this list include One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard, The Secret Room by Marion Eames, The Withered Root by Rhys Davies, and The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi. I chose these books because they were all written by award-winning Welsh novelists, and all the novels are set in Wales. There’s a mix of twentieth and twenty-first-century books here, so you can choose whichever speaks to you.
Who is the most famous Welsh author? There are quite a few notable Welsh authors who’ve gifted us with their words. You can read about some of them and find their books in this post about famous Welsh authors.
Another question people ask is, is there an Anglo-Welsh literature? Yes. The term especially refers to a book by a Welsh author who writes in English. However, books translated into English from Welsh may also be considered Anglo-Welsh literature, depending on the subject matter. Anglo-Welsh literature is often about the author sharing their unique perspective of modern Wales, its culture, and what it means to be Welsh.
One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard
This award-winning Welsh novel tells the tale of the troubled childhood of a boy growing up in poverty. The young man narrating the book never gives a name. Yet, throughout the novel, we are there with him through his turbulent personal evolution. Prichard writes the tale concisely yet elegantly. He paints a poignant picture of the harshness and brutality of life in a small Welsh village. He originally wrote the book in the Welsh language. However, even in English, the story has a poetic, almost musical quality full of highs and lows. One Moonlit Night was Prichard’s only book. This gifted author was also the youngest to win the National Eisteddfod.
From the blurb: This autobiographical coming-of-age classic offers a “visceral, comic and tragic” portrait of rural life in Wales during the Great War (The Guardian, UK).
Named the Greatest Welsh Novel by the Wales Arts Review, this beautifully rendered novel tells of a boy’s hardscrabble life in rural Wales and his challenging—yet at times transcendent—journey into adulthood. In the 1910s, the village of Bethesda is a place of poverty and religion; illness, and hard labor. But by the light of a full moon, our narrator and his friends Huw and Moi witness a side to their Welsh village life that they had no idea existed, and their innocence is exchanged for the shocking reality of the adult world.
Welsh Novel: The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price
The Life of Rebecca Jones is an immaculately written story by an amazing author. The book is about a woman who reflects upon the hardships and complexities of her mother’s life growing up on a farm in remote Eryri (Snowdonia). Interestingly, while the book reads very much like a memoir, it is a novel, not a factual account. However, the situations, emotions, and struggles encountered are so incredibly real. If you read this book, you can feel every line of it. There’s a twist coming at the end (no spoilers here)! Prepare to be forever changed.
From the blurb: In the early years of the last century, Rebecca is born into a rural community in the Maesglasau Valley in Wales; her family has been working the land for a thousand years, but the changes brought about by modernity threaten the survival of her language and her family’s way of life.
Rebecca’s reflections on the century are delivered with haunting dignity and a simple intimacy, while her evocation of the changing seasons and a life that is so in tune with its surroundings is rich and poignant. The Life of Rebecca Jones has all the makings of a classic, fixing on a vanishing period of rural history, and the novel’s final, unexpected revelation remains unforgettable and utterly moving.
The Secret Room by Marion Eames
Marion Eames wrote The Secret Room in Welsh in 1969. The Welsh title is Y Stafell Ddirgel. In 1975, it was translated into English. Then, in 2001, it became an immensely successful series on S4C, the Welsh language television channel.
The book is about Quakers in North Wales during the 1600s. Set during the time of King Charles II, the story follows protagonist Rowland Ellis. He becomes a Quaker through a neighbor. Unfortunately, his wife doesn’t share his beliefs. After heavy religious persecution, Ellis and his fellow Quakers decide to leave Wales and pursue a better life in the American colonies. He soon starts a Welsh colony in Pennsylvania.
The title “The Secret Room” refers to an incident in the story. A former servant tells the authorities that Ellis has a secret room where he keeps Catholic items. However, the words are also a metaphor for the private space inside every person’s heart where one finds their inner light.
Welsh Novel: The Withered Root by Rhys Davies
The book really draws you in with such an interesting title. It refers to the decline of religious faith. While The Withered Root is properly here as a Welsh novel and not a biography, it offers a fictional account of an actual historical figure, Evan Roberts—a prominent leader in the Welsh Revival. Here, he appears as the protagonist, Reuben Daniels. It’s an evocative novel that gets you seeing, feeling, and even laughing at times. The story explores a pivotal time of spiritual awakening in the Christian faith, which began in 1904. We follow Reuban’s calling as a preacher who struggles with his own discomfort and dealings with others.
Some readers feel the book is sexist and that every woman in the book is portrayed as wicked and utterly unlikeable. However, the author may have done this intentionally. Perhaps he was trying to show, quite successfully, how men in Christian society viewed the opposite sex at the time.
From the blurb: Recounting the protagonist’s troubled life, this tale tells the story of Reuben Daniels, reared in a South Wales industrial valley in the bosom of the Nonconformist culture. Therein lies his downfall and that of his people in this chronicle of utter opposition to Welsh Nonconformity. Throughout the account, Revivalist passions create a perverse outlet for an all-too-human sexuality that chapel culture has otherwise repressed. Nonconformity ultimately withers the root of natural sexual well-being in the Welsh and then feeds off the twisted fruits.
The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi
From the blurb: This exceptional novel about family, love, and the innocence and terror of childhood was one of the most applauded and auspicious debuts of the last year. Compared by reviewers to Angela’s Ashes and Wuthering Heights, The Hiding Place was the only debut work to be shortlisted for England’s prestigious Booker Prize—in the company of Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood—and went on to become a universally praised U.S. national best-seller.
Set in a Maltese immigrant community in Cardiff, Wales, and peopled with sharp-edged, luminously drawn characters, The Hiding Place is the story of Frankie Gauci, his wife, Mary, and their six daughters. With her “unusual gift for letting her characters’ interior lives come forth” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Azzopardi chronicles Frankie’s unforgivable betrayal: gambling away his family’s livelihood and eventually the family itself.
The Gaucis’ story is seen through the eyes of Dolores, the youngest daughter and the embodiment of bad luck in her father’s estimation, condemned to bear the mark of a family that is rapidly singeing at the edges. Dolores presents an unsparing portrayal of the fear and hopelessness of childhood amid grim poverty and neglect, of children growing up without safety nets and on sunken foundations. Sustained by a tightrope tension and a stark, youthful wisdom, The Hiding Place conjures the coarse sensuality of life among the docks, the smoky cafes and bars, the crumbling homes and gambling rooms of Tiger Bay.
This post recommended books for those looking for a Welsh novel.
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