Drift: Winner of the Wales Book of the Year

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She is an initial enigma, suppressed in some strange way, until a sort of catharsis occurs after she finds a gravely injured man washed up on the shore, seemingly out of the blue. Literature Wales’ executive director Claire Furlong said: “Huge congratulations to Caryl, Llŷr and to all the Wales Book of the Year 2023 winners.

Jasmine Donahaye in The Conversation UK on Victorian imperialist naming and claiming of Palestine's 'natural resources for western science, and for personal glory. I have three books out this year, and they were all two-book deals, so there will be three more texts coming up soon.This is a mentored review produced as part of a graduate placement with ABERforward careers department. The elements of magical realism may not be to everyone’s taste, but the strength of Lewis’s writing means that she carries them off with panache. There is the occasional clang of something culturally familiar (a scene where Nefyn tells a prison guard to walk into the sea feels a little akin to Jedi mind tricks). Her breakthrough novel Martha, Jac a Sianco (2004) is widely regarded as a modern classic of Welsh literature, and sits on the Welsh curriculum. The novel opens in a wind-torn cove, a place where the reclusive Nefyn loiters to collect “shells and whelks, egg cases and seeds”.

Initially, the reader may assume that Joseph is protecting Nefyn from herself and shielding her from society because she suffers from a mental health affliction. In addition, there was never any real sense of threat from the external forces supposedly trying to tear Nefyn and Hamza apart. Contemporary concerns of war, displacement and identity are adroitly woven into a story with a magical quality, underpinned by some lovely yearning writing about the land and sea. I have a few picture books in the pipeline, I have my next novel for Doubleday, which is well on the way.

Though their worlds are depicted without overt judgement or moral imposition, the pace of the novel means there is little time for enquiry into some fleeting moments of context (say, why a council estate upbringing has fed into calculating behaviour). We’re in lambing season at the moment, and you will see crows circling lambs and taking their eyes and tongues, and that is as much a part of nature as the spring flowers and all the beauty that happens at this time of year, and that gives you a clear picture of the duality of nature. I live on a farm, and I’m immersed in nature all the time, but I think what’s particularly interesting is that nature writing doesn’t exist in the Welsh language as a form, and yet the connection is somehow still there.

A violent storm will bring these two lost souls together—but other forces will soon try to tear them apart. A freak landslide, when Hamza is being moved from the camp by lorry, washes him into the sea, from which he is rescued by Nefyn. For example, there is quite a bit of telling when it comes to Joseph’s romantic relations and his evening trips to the pub: ‘She had lit like a struck match, her anger flaming, and turned her back on him until he placed his hand on her hip, tugged her towards him. So I loosely based it around Llangrannog, and the holiday homes are a comment on how difficult it is to sustain a living culture when you have homes that are empty half the year, and the cultural erasure that comes with changing the names of places and properties.

Indeed the sea is her true element and she seems somewhat stranded on land, where she lives in a clifftop cottage that has seen better days and needs a new roof. While Nefyn has agency and a voice, I disliked the ending still, even though it was to be expected, the book having turned into that kind of story with folklore.