Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Essays, Non Fiction, Places, Travel
Number of pages: 155
ISBN: 9781781726723
Publication date: May 23, 2022
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Essays, Non Fiction, Places, Travel
Number of pages: 155
ISBN: 9781781726730
Publication date: May 23, 2022
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
“Busy, fragmented prose, which is polyphonic in voice, time-bending in span, and a whirlwind to read…” – Wales Arts Review
This collection of short prose begins with a real 1945 diary kept in Burma, and Minhinnick telling stories to his mother in her care home.
It includes a series of pictures of war-stricken Baghdad, and vignettes about place and travel, dedicated to Jan Morris.
On the way we encounter a Middle East island devoted to sustainability, close ups of what clearing a family house reveals, and the writer’s intimately imagined Welsh sand dunes.
Minhinnick also watches the Stereophonics in Sydney, mourns the Golan Heights and meets a family of destitute Bedouins.
Throughout we encounter the Covid pandemic, threats of extinction, and images of post-apocalyptic life.
A breathless epic…
Robert Minhinnick
Robert Minhinnick is one of Wales’ (some would say Britain’s) most eminent writers. He is a multi-prizewinning poet, essayist and novelist; his most recent poetry collection was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in 2017 and won Wales Book of the Year, which he has won three times. Two of his novels have been shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize. He edited Poetry Wales for ten years. Minhinnick is also an environmentalist and founder of Friends of the Earth Cymru and Sustainable Wales who has written extensively on the environment.
His debut novel Sea Holly (2007) was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2008. Robert’s second novel Limestone Man (2015) is a gripping story of a man who tries to connect past and present yet is haunted by dreams of Australia and his youth. His novel Nia was longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2019
He edited Gorwelion: Shared Horizons (2021) a book of essays about climate change. His latest non-fiction book Delirium was published by Seren (2021).
“Robert Minhinnick has by now been writing at the top of his game for such a long time that it’s as if the settings on his quality control mechanism have jammed on “high.”… His latest offering is no exception when it comes to setting a standard – a series of bright, burnished pieces of short prose which sparkle with intent and energy… Minhinnick compares his dad’s ability to work with stone to those of a poet…Which might not be a bad way to summarise the way in which Delirium works – small, beautiful, gem-like fragments adding up to a satisfying, lapidary whole.”
Jon Gower, Nation.Cymru
