Library of Wales: Dai Country

At the heart of Dai Country - the central valleys of twentieth-century South Wales from the 1930s to the 1970s - was the metropolis of Pontypridd, and it is from this vantage point in time and space that Alun Richards cast his baleful eye on the personal relationships and social ambitions of the inhabitants of this much-fabled country.
In this compendium volume, the best of his short stories, as funny and savage as they are scathing and compassionate, are combined with his entrancing autobiographical memoir Days of Absence to take us to the core of those incomparable valleys, with their lived experience stripped bare for once of their usual cloak of cliché and sentiment.
"The fiction establishes him as the supreme chronicler of (post-war) South Wales valley life ... and his fascinating account of his upbringing in English-speaking Pontypridd ... raises questions about the complex plurality of modern Wales which still command serious attention". The New Companion to the Literature of Wales (1998)
********************************* In Dai Country, we have combined the first part of Richards' autobiography Days of Absence with a selection of what we think is his best short fiction. Alun’s superb talents as a story teller are emphasised in such stories as 'The Scandalous Thoughts of Elmyra Mouth' and 'The Former Miss Merthyr Tydfil'.
'As a boy I was a creature of disguises, a spy in another man’s land. There were facts about myself which I could not bear to face and in order to avoid doing so I began, at an early age, to spend a good deal of my day in reverie, slipping off into daydreams which provided another world where I would not be found out.' Alun Richards, Days of Absence in Dai Country -- Publisher: Parthian Books
One of the most recent additions to the glorious Library of Wales series, Dai Country brings together a selection of short fiction and autobiography by this prolific writer and chronicler of life in the south Wales valleys from the 1930s through to the late 1970s. It’s a judicious selection, offering a taste of Richards’ writing that will undoubtedly lead many readers to seek out more of his work. The book begins with the early part of Richards’ memoir, Days of Absence, covering his life up until he leaves school to train as a teacher. Some of the recollections are vivid and compelling, and the whole is suffused with his deep affection for his hometown of Pontypridd and with a sense of belonging, rootedness and identity – themes that recur again and again in the stories, some of which clearly draw on his personal experiences. In ‘Going to the Flames’, the narrator remembers his visits as a boy, bearing the gift of his grandmother’s Welsh cakes and teisen lap, to an old man who is clearly feared and ostracised by the adult community. “It is only looking back that one sees how complicated are issues which seemed too simple.” This looking back, this seeing first through the eyes of youth or innocence and then again through the lens of maturity and experience, is a stylistic device that Richards uses to consummate effect in his stories, giving his characters a complexity and emotional depth that are quite extraordinary. Who could forget the beautiful, ambitious Dorothea Lemon and her steadfast stooge Will Willis in ‘Dream Girl’? Or Elmyra’s terror, in ‘The Scandalous Thoughts of Elmyra Mouth’, at the sudden, unprecedented notion that her husband might be unfaithful to her? Or poor Melville’s posturing in ‘The Former Miss Merthyr Tydfil’? Working on many levels, Richards’ stories and characters linger long in the mind. -- Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com