"The fiction establishes him as the supreme chronicler of (post-war) South Wales valley life... and his fascinating account of his upbringing in English-speaking Pontypridd... raises questions about the complex plurality of modern Wales which still command serious attention."
The New Companion to the Literature of Wales

Crynodeb:
Wrth galon Dai Country – cymoedd canolog de Cymru yn yr ugeinfed ganrif o’r 1930au hyd at y 1970au – oedd metropolis Pontypridd, ac o’r safbwynt hwn mewn amser a gwagle mae Alun Richards yn taflu golwg anfad ar berthynas bersonol ac uchelgeisiau cymdeithasol trigolion y wlad a chwedlonwyd yn fynych. Yn y gyfrol casgliad compendiwm hon, cyfunir y gorau o’i straeon byrion, mor ddoniol a ffyrnig ag y maent yn grafog ac yn llawn cydymdeimlad gyda’i hunangofiant cyfareddol Days of Absence sy’n ein cymryd ni at galon y cymoedd digyffelyb, â’u profiadau o fyw wedi’u fflangellu’n noeth am unwaith o’u mantell o ystrydeb a sentiment.

Nodiadau bywgraffyddol:
Ganed Alun Richards ym Mhontypridd ym 1929. O’r 1960au roedd yn awdur llawn amser llwyddiannus a chyhoeddodd nofelau ynghyd â chasgliadau o straeon byrion yn ogystal â dramâu ar gyfer y llwyfan a radio, sgriptiau gwreiddiol ar gyfer y teledu ac addasiadau i’r teledu, gan gynnwys cyfres yr Onedin Line ar gyfer y BBC. Bu farw yn 2004.

Rhagflas byr

On 8 May, 2004, a blue Saab 9.3 pulled to a stop on the lower end of Michael’s Road in Blaencwm, and from the passenger side door a tall man, a broad man, dressed in a dark suit and dark glasses, stepped out onto the road and waited for the other occupants to join him on the street. From the driver’s side appeared a significantly shorter man, with close-cropped grey hair and moustache, an equally dark suit and dark glasses; and their wives emerged, elegant in tight dresses, no less charismatic, the whole vision like a valleys version of the Corleones. The women walked beside their husbands up the road toward a small crowd gathered in front of a house; the terrace of which it was a part was framed by an arc of mountain, cliff and waterfall under bright-blue, late-spring sky: a fusion of Rhondda and Hollywood, much like the prose – fiction and autobiography of the taller of the two men, Alun Richards, writer and raconteur. He’d come to unveil a commemorative plaque to his fried, the Rhondda prose gangster, Ron Berry.
Darllenwch y rhagair cyfan i Dai Country YMA...

Mwy o wybodaeth a sylwadau:
I’w gyhoeddi ar 1 Hydref 2009.