Synopsis:

Hannah Ellis is thirty-five, unmarried and still living at Y Glyn, the family farm in Wales where she has been brought up by her mother and step-father, a forbidding man with a powerful hold on the neighbourhood. Loving her country, yet resenting the egotism of her family, she yearns for the return of her long-banished brother Philip, believing that he will rescue her from this bleak existence. But Hannah little realises that Philip’s arrival is imminent, and is to herald enormous changes as he unwittingly ignites the passions and strengths of an unusually intertwined community.

About the author:

Emyr Humphreys was born at Trelawnyd in Flintshire, and attended the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, before registering as a conscientious objector at the outbreak of the Second World War. After the war he worked as a teacher, a drama lecturer at Bangor, and as a BBC producer. During his long bilingual writing career, he has published over twenty novels, which include such classics as A Toy Epic (1958), Outside the House of Baal (1965), and The Land of the Living, an epic sequence of seven novels charting the political and cultural history of twentieth-century Wales: Flesh and Blood; The Best of Friends; Salt of the Earth; An Absolute Hero; Open Secrets; National Winner, and Bonds of Attachment. He has also written plays for stage and television, short stories, The Taliesin Tradition (a cultural history of Wales), and published his Collected Poems in 1999. Among many honours, he has been awarded The Somerset Maugham Prize, The Hawthornden Prize, and the Welsh Book of the Year Award.

Short extract:

‘My dear Philip,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t get bitter.’
He was all right. These were his rooms, oak-panelling, books, sherry and all the time in the world.
‘Bitter,’ I said. ‘You’d be bitter if you were me.’

Buy:

Buy A Man's Estate from the Parthian online bookstore for £7.99

Synopsis:

Widely acclaimed for its warm humour, lyricism and honesty, as well as its accurate evocation of the thirties, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve has become a sung-after classic. In this delightful autobiographical novel, Dannie Abse skilfully interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backcloth of the times- unemployment, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War.

About the author:

Dannie Abse was born in Cardiff in 1923. He began his medical studies at the Welsh National School of Medicine and qualified as a doctor from Westminster Hospital, London in 1950. While still a student his first book of poems was published and his first play performed. Further poetry volumes followed over the decades, culminating in his New & Collected Poems (2003)and Running Late (2006). His first novel, Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve appeared in 1954 and his most recent, the Booker long-listed The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds and Dr Glas in 2002. His three prize-winning plays were collected in The View from Row G (1990) and his autobiography, Goodbye, Twentieth Century, was published in 2001. He is president of the Welsh Academi and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Short extract:

One might expect a poet’s prose to be full of flowery descriptions and metaphors, but not if that writer is Dannie Abse. His modus operandi is both tougher and more human. He is a rare example of a person who has made a commitment to the wellbeing of body and spirit simultaneously through the arts and sciences. Dannie, the young protagonist of Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve, feels attracted by two kinds of work. In conversation with his friend, Keith, he reflects on this: ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘I think I’ll become a doctor after all.’ ‘Thought you were going to be a poet and an assassin,’ Keith reminded me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘One must choose the difficult path. It’s too easy to be a poet, or to knock off a few heads of Europe. Too easy. I’ll take the difficult path. Anyway, I believe in Democracy.’ ‘What’ll you be tomorrow?’ smiled Keith. ‘Dunno,’ I said.

Buy:

Buy Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve from the Parthian online bookstore for £7.99