Parthian Books

An entrancing and highly unusual account of a journey to the ends of the earth in search of a dream. Imogen Herrad sets off in search of the descendants of the nineteenth-century colony of Welsh settlers in Patagonia, in the deep south of Argentina, and discovers that Welsh-speaking communities, proud of their heritage, still exist there today. She also discovers a country and a way of life hugely different from her European experience. Her explorations lead Herrad beyond the Welsh to discover the even more remarkable story of the Mapuche, Tehuelche and other indigenous tribes, who have suffered the all too familiar fate of colonised peoples. This unexpected direction gives Herrad a new perspective on her own life and those of others, as she ends her travels standing on a Patagonian hillside, part of an ancient Mapuche ceremony of the land.

As a child I longed for escape... I wished things could be different, but what can you do but hold on for the rid? uch a small house... How could it have accommodated both my mother and grandmother? They were both huge beyond their physical boundaries, filling each room until I thought the fire would go out for lack of air.

A personal ramble around the book world from the man who has experienced all sides of it. This book has something for everyone: writers, academics, critics and other enthusiasts in search of a no-holds-barred personal history; administrators wishing to navigate the obstacle course that is funding writers and writing; fans hunting data on the Poetry wars of the 70s, and fellow litterateurs who will want to check whether they have received a mention in these pages. Few others in Wales know the business and how we got here like Finch does. And few others will have been capable of reporting back in such an entertaining fashion.

Tereza and Ivan share secrets. Tereza is now in art school away from the town where she grew up. Ivan is a teacher and artist. Tereza is now nineteen, Ivan is fifty-seven. They have known each other for years. Tereza shares her secrets with her friend Silvia. Ivan does not tell anyone. He constructs memories of Tereza to keep in his bed at night, covering them with sweat and tears. In this minimalist, poetic novella with autobiographical elements Nicol Hochholczerová weaves a story of obsession and power and how both can lead to damage and separation. Rich with symbolism, its explosive themes – of eating disorders, abusive control and family dysfunction – are delicately handled with honesty and intelligence. Nicol Hochholczerová’s first novel is a controversial best-seller. It has been awarded prizes and is being widely translated across Europe.

A searing, reflective and truthful collection of essays by award-winning writer, Crystal Jeans, as she explores the struggles of addiction and mental health during the turbulent transition of adolescence into adulthood through to the strains of marriage, childbirth and parenting. Growing up in south Wales, navigating gender and sexuality, Jeans writes about her relationships with others as well as her own body with a frank self-awareness. Fiercely feminist, brutally honest and full of sharp cultural references, Blueprints is not another trauma story but a vital validation of the act of writing about pain and loss while grappling with identity in a troubled world.

This beautiful, poetic debut novel warns of the dangers of being a quiet person in a loud world and letting magnetic strangers pull your strings. Set on the Welsh coast, it is an unsettling coming-of-age tale about the importance of learning how to take the lead and be yourself, of finding hope in the shadows, of letting your dreams bloom. -- Books Council of Wales

Set in the valleys of the Welsh iron country, this turbulent, unforgettable novel begins the saga of the Mortymer family. A family of hard men and beautiful women, all forced into a bitter struggle with their harsh environment, as they slave and starve for the cruel English ironmasters. But adversity could never still the free spirit of Wales, or quiet its soaring voice, and the Mortymers fight and sing and make love even as the iron foundries ravish their homeland and cripple their people. The Mortymer’s struggle has become emblematic of a nation’s history and struggle, it is a unique story of the people of Wales.

Philip Burton (1904-95) is best remembered as the schoolmaster responsible for training and transforming his pupil Richard Jenkins into Richard Burton, world- famous star of stage and screen. Together they produced a remarkable symbiosis. The stage-struck Philip Burton was present behind the scenes for the rest of the actor's life, intervening at crucial moments to ensure consummate stage performances in, for example, Coriolanus, Hamlet and Camelot. This biography, drawing upon a number of previously unseen sources, provides a fresh angle on this compelling story. And by placing Philip Burton's story centre stage, a remarkable figure also emerges in his own right. In a life that virtually spanned the twentieth century, he demonstrated resilience and transatlantic triumph against the odds. Like his best-known protege, he was born into an impoverished South Wales mining family. Alongside teaching, he acted, wrote and produced plays and in 1945, with wireless at its height, he became a BBC radio producer. He worked on almost 200 radio programmes, encouraging newcomers and producing work by Dylan Thomas. He wrote scripts for the fledgling television and penned its first 'soap.'Reinventing himself in the mid-1950s, Philip Burton moved to the United States where, after dabbling in the film industry and working as a theatre director, he became the inspirational first director of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. He took American citizenship and travelled across the States, delivering sparkling Shakespearean lecture-recitals. He published five books, living in Key West, Florida from the 1970s. Philip Burton died in 1995 aged ninety, his expertise and encouragement having enabled numerous aspiring actors and writers to flourish on both sides of the Atlantic.

This book has something for everyone: writers, academics, critics and other enthusiasts in search of a no-holds-barred personal history; administrators wishing to navigate the obstacle course that is funding writers and writing; fans hunting data on the Poetry wars of the 70s, and fellow litterateurs who will want to check whether they have received a mention in these pages. If you're new to the game and seeking publication, or just someone who enjoys the cut and thrust of the literary world, then this book is for you. Few others in Wales know the business and how we got here like Finch does. And few others will have been capable of reporting back in such an entertaining fashion.

Minnie Pallister's life was so fantastic that not even a thrillerwriter could imagine it. A feminist, pacifist and socialist, she was twice accused of sedition in the First World War before travelling to Nazi Germany in late 1938 and 1939 to rescue Jews, helping bring them to Britain at the outbreak of the Second World War. In between, having reached national prominence in the labour movement, in which she was considered the best woman orator, and with a Parliamentary career beckoning, she was struck down by an illness which cruelly robbed her of speech. Suffering years of paralysing infirmity, which reduced her to the edge of penury, she eventually recovered to become a successful journalist with the Daily Mirror and the Daily Herald. Fearless and principled and always challenging, not least in advocating gender equality, Pallister was initially barred from a position with the BBC because of her socialist politics, and later twice banned by the Corporation, first for her pacifist then her feminist politics. An outstanding broadcaster who became for a time a household name, she was a regular contributor to Woman's Hour and as an advocate of women's rights from the 1920s to the 1950s, she was a forerunner of the Women's Liberation Movement. Pallister was such a compelling figure that her 'Life Story' was serialised on radio over five days during her lifetime.

When poet Jemma L. King learned that her unborn son faced life- threatening conditions, her world unravelled. In his first fragile months, she turned to poetry to make sense of the impossible, asking: what happens before we begin, and what happens when we meet our most significant ending? panning centuries and continents, this breathtaking collection moves through time and space - from the icefields of Antarctica to the Salem Witch Trials, from ancient Greek myths to the neon-drenched visions of Warhol and McQueen. King's verse travels to the stars and back, interrogating the boundaries of existence, the fragility of life, and the fierce power of motherhood. With exquisite lyricism and unflinching insight, this collection is a meditation on survival, rebirth, and the ever-unfolding mystery of what it means to be alive. A cosmic, deeply personal journey that pulses with wonder, it reminds us that even in our darkest moments, we remain part of something vast, luminous, and filled with possibility.

A Welsh poet based in Mexico, his poems about Mexico capture the magic and vibrancy of a country Andre Breton once described as 'the mostsurrealist in the world.' Other poems pay homage to Welsh cult heroes John Cale and Adrian Street, and Ben's plucky ancestor, Rebecca Howells, who emigrated to Patagonia after her husband was killed in a mining explosion at Blaengwawr Colliery. At once funny, tender, and beautifully bizarre, Breakfast with the Scavengers explores love, loss, loneliness, our never-ending quest for connection, and those blink-and-you-miss-them moments of transcendence that can light up our lives.

In his sophomore collection, Roberto Pastore hones in on an era of constant flux, violence and grief, offering a kind of bewildered solace with a misfit voice that feels truly renewed. 'I attend the reunion/of myself. Swapping out lime water for chamomile tea./ Comb-over days in which we refuse to accept what is lost.' In poems that are self-reflexive and elegiac, yet full of flashes of the unexpected, we are invited to look tenderly and unflinchingly at our own mysterious experience of living, our own 'sad heartsong'. Here are poems that feel both intimate and timely, yet somehow beamed in from another planet, far, far away.

In a small estuary village on the Welsh coast, Catrin is mourning the anniversary of her mother's drowning when a teenage girl disappears on the same mudflats. Terrified of history repeating itself and driven by unresolved grief, Catrin becomes obsessed with finding Emily. Her search dredges up dark revelations from the village's past and present, uncovering secrets about Catrin's own family. Secrets that her parents had never wanted her to discover. Truth Like Water is the lyrical, gripping debut novel from an award-winning writer.

From a young age Carly Holmes has been in thrall to the creatures that live around us. Her childhood companion was a blind gander called Beep Beep who thought she was his wife. She nearly postponed her wedding when a pair of wrens nested in a hole by her back door and cut it very fine to fledge their chicks into an assorted audience of cats and magpies. This collection of essays, beautifully illustrated throughout, are each of them love letters to the Teifi valley and to the river that winds through Carly's days. The wild animals - the badgers who visit nightly for peanuts; the juvenile osprey who learned to fish on the estuary across the lane; the young jackdaw she nurtured until it was healthy enough to ignore her whenever she went into the garden; the cuckoos she discovered in flagrante one afternoon on a lockdown walk - are the very heart of it.

Foreword by Lord Gregory Mostyn.Since the first ? Welch? sailor set foot on Japanese shores in the seventeenth century to the present-day presence of high-tech Japanese companies in the Valleys, Wales and Japan are two nations with deeply entwined roots. Captured in this groundbreaking book is a chorus of modern-day Welsh migrants to Japan. There is Catharine who, in 1965, followed her Japanese husband to an ? out of kilter? house in the seaside town of Zushi; Jack, the ? capitalist ski bum? , who guides tourists through the bear-infested wilds of snowy Hokkaido, while on a volcanic island in the Seto Inland Sea, Simon clears jungle vines to develop his vegan farm.There are also actors, writers, teachers, an ex-bouncer turned martial artist, a filmmaker, a games localiser, and many more. There are even Japanese fans who promote Welsh culture in their homeland. Together they form a polyphonic group portrait based on oral-history techniques, mixing travel writing, character study and reportage, while proving an ear for natural speech.