Bøger udgivet af Parthian Books

Writers, artists, urban explorers and archaeologists have long been drawn to the places of industry and the gaunt and mournful remains left behind by deindustrialisation and urban decay. No artist has been more committed to recording and interpreting such environments than George Little. Born in the east end of Swansea in 1927 he grew up next to the abandoned copper works, slag heaps and still-busy docks of Dylan Thomas's ' ugly, lovely town' . As a teenager the destruction of the Swansea Blitz was seared into his imagination. After training at Swansea College of Art and the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford he lectured in art history at Swansea University. He brought a deep visual knowledge to a life's work exploring the dramatic forms and startling colours of industrial and urban decay in photographs, drawings and paintings. He continued working up until his death in 2019. With an introduction by Peter Wakelin. Featuring photographs and paintings from George Little that captured the heavy industry of south Wales and chronicled its decline.

Local Fires sees debut writer Joshua Jones turn his acute focus to his birthplace of Llanelli, South Wales. Sardonic and melancholic, joyful and grieving, these multifaceted stories may be set in a small town, but they have reach far beyond their locality. From the inertia of living in an ex-industrial working-class area, to gender, sexuality, toxic masculinity and neurodivergence, Jones has crafted a collection versatile in theme and observation, as the misadventures of the town's inhabitants threaten to spill over into an incendiary finale.

From Bryony Rheam, the award-winning author of All Come to Dust and This September Sun, comes a collection of sixteen short stories shining a spotlight on life in Zimbabwe over the last twenty years. The daily routines and the greater fate of ordinary Zimbabweans are represented with a deft, compassionate touch and flashes of humour.

A fiercely hopeful novel about family, sexuality, grief and how we as individuals can rediscover our political agency in the face of continued uncertainty.

A classic account of Irish army life by a working-class writer whose work and contribution to literary culture is only now being fully appreciated.

Before Charles became King, he was Prince of Wales. It was a role he took more seriously than any predecessor of the modern British monarchy. From the moment he was created Prince of Wales in 1958 until his accession to the throne, Charles's approach to the role was to serve Wales and to promote Welsh life.

Funny, lyrical and poignant, Shifts is a novel of the decline of industry and of the south Wales working class in the 1970s. It broke new ground on its appearance in combining a real, close-up depiction of work and ordinary lives with symbolic power and a wider imaginative reach. Jack Priday, down-at-heel and almost down and out, returns to his hometown towards the end of the 1970s after a decade's absence, just looking for a way to get by. His life becomes entangled with those of old friends Keith, Judith and O, and with the slow death throes of the male-dominated heavy industries that have shaped and defined the region and its people for almost two centuries. As circumstances shift around them, the principals are forced to find some understanding of them and to confront their own secret natures. From multiple viewpoints, Shifts is a slow-burning, controlled and intense examination of the relationship between our inner lives, the people around us and the forces of history.

Ulysses' Cat brings readers the work of some of the most outstanding authors of the younger generation from Croatia, Greece, Serbia, Slovenia and Wales who participated in a project of exchange residencies originally launched on the Croatian island of Mljet, where, according to legend, shipwrecked Ulysses found shelter. As Britain becomes metaphorically unmoored and drifts away from Europe, keeping connected through reading and dialogue provides us with new perspectives on our place in the world and on the tumultuous times we live in. The works of poetry, prose and essays included here offer a snapshot of the concerns and preoccupations shared by young writers from a region with a rich literature that rarely reaches English-language readers and at the same time confirms the vitality of the bilingual Welsh literary scene.

From a working-class Rhondda childhood through to the glamour of Barry Grammar and onto a coveted Balliol College scholarship and study in New York, David Smith was the rising intellectual star of a generation. In this beautifully written memoir Dai Smith engages and entertains with a personal life and times with the characteristic verve of a writer who has illuminated the modern history of the people of South Wales.

Incest, murder, delusion, and a devastating, tragic humor mark these three novellas that Gwyn Thomas wrote in 1946: The Dark Philosophers, Oscar, and Simeon. In this book the grimly humorous philosophers gather in an Italian café in the terraces to tell the tragic tale of comeuppance and manslaughter that they engineer.

A collection of new contemporary short stories by Welsh writers, comprising twelve diverse stories about relationships between people and places, representing the winners of the 2022 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. Including short biographicalnotes on the authors.

Beautiful, emotional and richly imagistic, Mari Ellis Dunning presents mothers in many forms: those experienced, chosen, unwitting, and presumed, asking us to consider the true nuances of motherhood - delicate as pearl, durable as bone.

In this clear and absorbing memoir John Sam Jones writes ofa life lived on the edge. It is story of journeys and realisation,of acceptance and joy.

'A major novelist' -- Punch'Warmth, liveliness, honesty and compassion' -- The Sunday TimesStan Barstow's landmark 'Brit-Lit' novel of the sixties immortalized Vic Brown, the amiable working class lad from the North and led the way for author's like Nick Hornby writing similar slice-of-life drama. Still as fresh and alive today, it spawned two sequels: The Watchers on the Shore (1966) and The Right True End (1976). First published in 1960, it has long been used as a set text in British schools. It has also been translated at various times into a film starring Alan Bates (1962) of the same name, a television series (1973) starring Clive Wood, a radio play and a stage play. A Kind of Loving was the first of a trilogy, published over the course of sixteen years, that followed hero Vic Brown through marriage, divorce and a move from the mining town of Cressley to London. This new edition includes an afterword by David Collard.

Gwyn Thomas was born, the last of twelve children, into a Rhondda mining family in 1913. After a childhood marked by the strikes of the 1920s, he went off to study Spanish at Oxford University and in Madrid, where he met the poet Federico García Lorca and witnessed the turmoil which would lead to the Spanish Civil War. On his return, amidst the economic mire of the 1930s and his own burgeoning teaching career in Barry in the 1940s, he picked up his pen and began to write. For more than forty years, until his death in 1981, as novelist, screenwriter, master of the short story, and prizewinning playwright, Gwyn Thomas delivered compelling and comedic portraits of his world of South Wales. His creative genius earned enduring fame on both sides of the Atlantic and on both sides of the European Cold War divide. As a provocative and insightful broadcaster, he embraced the possibilities of radio and television, whilst leaving his hosts and guests alike in fits of knowing laughter. This landmark biography, enriched with unrivalled access to private papers and international archives, tells the remarkable story of one of modern Wales's greatest literary voices.

The history of Wales as a destination and confection of English Romanticwriters is well-known, but this book reverses the process, turning a Welshgaze on the rest of the world.

This title is the second part of Miren Agur Meabe's triptych. In2020 she published her fifth poetry collection, Nola gorde errautsakolkoan (Holding Ashes Close to the Heart) - which is the final partof the triptych. It won the 2021 Spanish National Poetry Award.

Strange Animals is collection of experiences - its thread is the author'sjourney from childhood home to settling across an ocean, moving throughthe vagaries of modern love as she travels to new cities and a newfoundmaturity, whilst contemplating the end of youth and what one loses andgains in the process.

The Herring Man is a modern-day fable, beautifullyillustrated by the author, about dealing with grief andsearching for hope.