White Trail (15 page)

Ultimately I found that Cilydd and Goleuddydd, in many ways, were the original Culhwch and Olwen, and that they were in fact more interesting, damaged and complex than their rather one-dimensional offspring. And although their particular tale presents us with a different quest, one which leaves Culhwch and Ysbaddaden by the wayside and thrusts Cilydd forth as an unlikely hero – both quests are nevertheless bound together, weaving in and out of each other's fictional landscapes, illuminating and shadowing each other, each twist and turn navigating a white trail of hope around the en-croaching darkness of the
Mabinogion
.

Fflur Dafydd

Thanks are due to my ever-encouraging colleagues at Swansea University, Professor Stevie Davies, Nigel Jenkins, David Britton, and especially Professor Neil Reeve, who made it possible for me to take brief teaching relief in order to become writer-in-residence at Iowa University. Thanks, too, to my agent, Euan Thorneycroft, for his counsel, Owen Sheers for his support, and Peter Florence for being such a vocal advocate of my work. Menna Elfyn and Siân Elfyn Jones, as always, have been my first readers, and I am extremely grateful to them for their speedy reading and feedback. I could also not have asked for a more patient and understanding editor in Penny Thomas, and I am greatly indebted to her for her hard work and precision.

Much of this book was written in the spare bedroom of Sŵn-yr-Einion, Llangain, and my heartfelt gratitude goes to Wendy and Glanmor Evans for allowing me the time and privacy to work, and for feeding and entertaining both myself and my daughter. I am lucky to have such wonderful parents-in-law, just as my daughter is lucky to have such loving grandparents.

GWYNETH LEWIS
THE MEAT TREE

A dangerous tale of desire, DNA, incest and flowers plays out within the wreckage of an ancient spaceship in
The Meat Tree
, an absorbing retelling of one of the best-known Welsh myths by prizewinning writer and poet, Gwyneth Lewis.

An elderly investigator and his female apprentice hope to extract the fate of the ship's crew from its antiquated virtual reality game system, but their empirical approach falters as the story tangles with their own imagination.

By imposing a distance of another 200 years and millions of light years between the reader and the medieval myth, Gwyneth Lewis brings the magical tale of Blodeuwedd, a woman made of flowers, closer than ever before: maybe uncomfortably so.

After all, what man has any idea how sap burns in the veins of a woman?

Gwyneth Lewis was the first National Poet of Wales, 2005-6. She has published seven books of poetry in Welsh and English, the most recent of which is
A Hospital Odyssey
.
Parables and Faxes
won the Aldeburgh Poetry Prize and was also shortlisted for the Forward, as was
Zero Gravity
. Her non-fiction books are
Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression
(shortlisted for the Mind Book of the Year) and
Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage
.

OWEN SHEERS
WHITE RAVENS

“Hauntingly imaginative...” – Dannie Abse

Two stories, two different times, but the thread of an ancient tale runs through the lives of twenty-first-century farmer's daughter Rhian and the mysterious Branwen… Wounded in Italy, Matthew O'Connell is seeing out WWII in a secret government department spreading rumours and myths to the enemy. But when he's given the bizarre task of escorting a box containing six raven chicks from a remote hill farm in Wales to the Tower of London, he becomes part of a story over which he seems to have no control.

Based on the Mabinogion story ‘Branwen, Daughter of Llyr',
White
Ravens
is a haunting novella from an award-winning writer.

Owen Sheers is the author of two poetry collections,
The Blue
Book
and
Skirrid Hill
(both Seren); a Zimbabwean travel narrative,
The Dust Diaries
(Welsh Book of the Year 2005); and a novel,
Resistance
, shortlisted for the Writers' Guild Best Book Award.
A
Poet's Guide to Britain
is the accompanying anthology to Owen's BBC 4 series.

RUSSELL CELYN JONES
THE NINTH WAVE

“A brilliantly-imagined vision of the near future...one of his finest achievements.” – Jonathan Coe

Pwyll, a young Welsh ruler in a post-oil world, finds his inherited status hard to take. And he's never quite sure how he's drawn into murdering his future wife's fiancé, losing his only son and switching beds with the king of the underworld. In this bizarrely upside-down, medieval world of the near future, life is cheap and the surf is amazing; but you need a horse to get home again down the M4.

Based on the Mabinogion story ‘Pwyll, Lord of Dyfed',
The Ninth
Wave
is an eerie and compelling mix of past, present and future. Russell Celyn Jones swops the magical for the psychological, the courtly for the post-feminist and goes back to Swansea Bay to complete some unfinished business.

Russell Celyn Jones is the author of six novels. He has won the David Higham Prize, the Society of Authors Award, and the Weishanhu Award (China). He is a regular reviewer for several national newspapers and is Professor of Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, London.

NIALL GRIFFITHS
THE DREAMS OF MAX & RONNIE

There's war and carnage abroad and Iraq-bound squaddie Ronnie is out with his mates ‘forgetting what has yet to happen'. He takes something dodgy and falls asleep for three nights in a filthy hovel where he has the strangest of dreams, watching the tattooed tribes of modern Britain surrounding a grinning man playing war games.

Meanwhile gangsta Max is fed up with life in his favourite Cardiff nightclub, Rome, and chases a vision of the perfect woman in far-flung parts of his country. But as Max loses his heart, his followers fear he may be losing his touch.

Niall Griffiths' retellings of two dream myths from the medieval Welsh Mabinogion cycle reveal an astonishingly contemporary and satirical resonance. Arthurian legend merges with its twenty-first century counterpart in a biting commentary on leadership, conflict and the divisions in British society.

Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool in 1966, studied English, and now lives and works in Aberystwyth. His novels include
Grits
,
Sheepshagger, Kelly and Victor
and
Stump
, which won Wales Book of the Year, and
Runt
. His non-fiction includes
Real
Aberystwyth
and
Real Liverpool
. He also writes reviews, radio plays and travel pieces.

HORATIO CLARE
THE PRINCE'S PEN

The Invaders' drones hear all and see all, and England is now a defeated archipelago, but somewhere in the high ground of the far west, insurrection is brewing.

Ludo and Levello, the bandit kings of Wales, call themselves freedom fighters. Levello has the heart and help of Uzma, from Pakistan – the only other country in the free world. Ludo has a secret, lethal if revealed.

Award-winning author Horatio Clare refracts politics, faith and the contemporary world order through the prism of one of the earliest British myths, the Mabinogion, to ask who are the outsiders, who the infidels and who the enemy within...

Horatio Clare is a writer, radio producer and journalist. Born in London, he grew up on a hill farm in the Black Mountains of South Wales as described in his first book
Running for the Hills
, nominated for the
Guardian
First Book Award and shortlisted for the
Sunday Times
Young Writer of the Year Award. Horatio has written about Ethiopia, Namibia and Morocco, and now divides his time between South Wales, Lancashire and London. His other books include
Sicily through Writers' Eyes
,
Truant: Notes from the
Slippery Slope
and
A Single Swallow
for which he was the recipient of a Somerset Maugham Award.